


Iron Man

by Kila9Nishika, Philosophizes



Series: Alexandria 'Verse [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe- Alternate History, Assisted Suicide, Gen, Murder, Seriously Alternate Universe, Torture, Violence by Child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 05:40:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 34,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1928709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kila9Nishika/pseuds/Kila9Nishika, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosophizes/pseuds/Philosophizes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Antony Antonius Stark ran away from home in 1822, at age nine, for Alexandria- the City of the Future. All he wants is an education and a life of science.</p><p>The universe has other plans. Mostly, they involve more death, danger, and destruction (of non-lab related sorts) than he ever wanted.</p><p>(Recommended that you read Captain Alexandria: The First Avenger before this)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> In case you hadn't noticed, the tags say that this is an Alternate History Alternate Universe- which means the world within is going to look very, very different. it's okay if things are little confusing. Leave us a comment if you think there are things that need more explaining, or just want to ask/talk about/express enthusiasm about what we've done.
> 
> A list of mentioned characters with their canon names is provided at the end of the story, as well as an explanation of the locations featured. Chapter Six is maps, for your convenience. 
> 
> General warnings for the story in the tags. Please, review them before reading, we're serious about these.
> 
> -
> 
> Warnings for this chapter specifically: murder (poisoning, gassing, shooting) with aspects of child soldiery, pirates, unintentional kidnapping.

_From recordings done by Shoshanna Sihara (Earth-96, “Sue Storm”). Translated by SHIELD._

-

Tony Stark….that’s a name that any person who hasn’t been living under a _rock_ knows.  What most people _don’t_ know is that he isn’t the result of spontaneous generation in the highest apartment in The Tower of Alexandria.  Most people can’t comprehend a Tony Stark that isn’t immediately followed by Yasuf Yinsen or Virginia Potts.

Most people would probably die of shock at the idea that Tony Stark spent the first nine years of his life in Rome.

Rome was once the center of the world.  “All roads lead to Rome” is a phrase that scholars still use and remember, even if it has long fallen from the vernacular due to inaccuracy.

What Rome is, above all else, is _old_. The newest piece of construction in Rome proper is the train station, which was built in 1433.  The tallest building in Rome is a puny twenty stories.  Romans, unlike most other city-dwellers, consistently see the sky, uninhibited by towers or bridges.  Rome has no canals, aside from those which predate the Common Era, and is perhaps most famous historically for once being the home of another Antony – Antonius Archimedes Nikephoros, the first Emperor of the Antonine Dynasty.

Incidentally, Antonius Archimedes Nikephoros left Rome for Alexandria in the seventh year of our Common Era.

The city is mostly still alive due to two things – history-lovers, and trade.  History-lovers flock to the city in droves, to see the society which built our own.  Trade still filters through Rome, if only to the rest of the Roman peninsula.

In Rome, the houses are old, the city is older, and there is a no-construction-zone for miles in every direction.  It is for that reason that Roman citizens are cremated, if they are not to be buried outside of the city.

Needless to say, cremation is not the nicest thing to watch for a nine-year-old boy, no matter how clever.

-

_January, 1822_

Tony bit his tongue as the smoke blew into his eyes.  _He would not cry._

The funerary center, built to house five hundred people (completed in 1413), was echoingly empty.  The stone was white, Tony noticed absently, except for where excess ash had landed from the last funeral.

His chest aching, Tony stared determinedly at the flames, which now engulfed the figure that had once been Aldwin Jarvis.  The Pluton priest droned on and waved incense through the air, but Tony refused to listen.

It was the same service than any other Roman would get, anyway.

Swallowing back something that _wasn’t tears_ , Tony looked around the room.  Cardelia Mattes, the housekeeper, was sobbing into her handkerchief.  Roksana Elitus, the fix-it lady, was rocking back and forth, tears streaming down her face.

There was a blatantly empty space where the head of the household was supposed to stand.

As the priest finished his droning, and the flames burned out, Cardelia wobbled over to Tony, sniffling.

“It’s okay to cry, Master Stark,” she said through a clogged nose.  “He was important to you.  It’ll be okay.”

“It _won’t!_ ” Tony shouted, pulling away as Cardelia reached out to touch his shoulder.  Before anyone could stop him, Tony sprinted out of the building and into the street.

Immediately, the noise of the city smacked him in the face.  Merchants and food-stall owners shouted for attention, and tourists moved in droves through the middle of the street.  For all that it was the middle of the winter, the sun was bright and the sky was blue. 

Tony ignored everything, and sprinted for the ancestral Antonian house.  The building had once (a very, _very_ long time ago) been a part of the palace complex, but had long since been under the ownership of the splinter family that had eventually begotten Antony Stark.  It was a grand old building, with marble sculptures all over the outer walls –

Tony cared for none of it.  Not without Jarvis.

Even in the last seven days since Jarvis had died, Tony had spent every few minutes expecting the man to appear from the shadows, frowning disapprovingly as Tony attempted to beat his previous records for going without sustenance.

Palming open the door, Tony scaled the two flights of stairs to his room with ease.  He snatched his scroll computer from his desk, and tumbled onto his bed, pulling the holo-page from its tube. 

“Open bank account,” Tony snapped.  “Key phrase: To be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.  Key code: 19-08-0001-26-05-1813-13-11-1743-STARK.”

An almost inaudible hum emitted from the tube as images, letters, and numbers began to fill the holo-page.  Impatiently, Tony trailed his finger down the page until he reached the section he was looking for.

_Account balance:  603.99438 credits_

_Spending account balance:  221.00000 credits_

_Savings account balance:  382.99438 credits_

_Account accessibility:  Global_

He flicked to another screen.  “Show me the average rate for renting a boat to Alexandria.”

The screen cleared.  _The average rate for renting a boat to Alexandria from Rome is 415 credits._

Tony scowled.  Normally, spending that much wouldn’t matter, but he knew that removing credits from his savings account would set off alarms.  The _last_ thing that Tony wanted was to be stopped before he got to Alexandria.  “Show me the average rate for hitching a ride with a private citizen to Alexandria.”

New lettering flickered across the page.   _The average rate for hitching a ride with a private citizen to Alexandria from Rome is 200 credits._

Tony grinned for the first time in a week.  Perhaps he could get away from this place after all. 

Fourteen hours later, glaring at the crowded docks, Tony was beginning to wonder whether his dreams were at all possible.

“Statistics say that this dock has between fifteen hundred and two thousand people on it a day,” Tony mumbled.  “No big deal.  Just three to four hundred times the amount of people I normally deal with.  Totally not a big deal.”

That didn’t stop his stomach from squirming as he pulled on his most confident smile and pushed into the fray.

It took only fifteen minutes and forty-three seconds to locate a boat with the proper tags indicating the destination to be Alexandria (although Tony’s method for reading the digital tags might have been wobbly on the legal side of things). The boat was being loaded by a single man, who seemed to be attempting to shift copious amounts of books from his dockside cart into the boat.

“Hello,” Tony parked himself directly within the man’s path.  “I’m Tony.  Are you headed to Alexandria?”

The man set his current armful down on the boat’s deck.  “I am.  The name’s Clovis, Clovis Mazzito.  Are you hitching?”

“I’d like to,” Tony replied.  “I’ll help you load your boat for a discount.”

Clovis snorted.  “Tony, I don’t even know the going rates for a hitcher.  But if you’re willing to help out…” he shrugged.  “There might be some free food before we leave this evening.”

Tony painted a smile onto his face.  Hopefully, it looked genuine.  “If I help load, and pay 150 credits, do we have a deal?”

Clovis blinked.  “For a kid, you’ve sure got some lawyer skills.  Yeah, if you help load, I’ll happily take the deal at 150.”

Tony felt his entire body relax.  He was going to Alexandria.

-

With two people loading Clovis’s boat, it didn’t take long until the boat taxied out into the coastbound traffic lane of the Tiber. The wind was coming at them from Ostia, wet and salty and smelling slightly of motor oil and fish. As they continued westward the traffic got thicker and slowed as they approached the mouth of the Tiber. Domestic traffic diverted east into the Fossa Nefertari, separating from the international traffic that went on to the main bulk of Ostia to be checked by customs.

Clovis pointed out the temple complex on Insulae Sacra opposite of the entrance from the canal into the Portus Nefertari as they made their way slowly through the line to go to exit into the Tyrrhenian.

“They say Antonius Archimedes’ last words to his son were not to let the Senate deify him,” he told Tony. “But Stephanos Antonius added his mother and her co-regent to the vote as well, and the first thing he did once the Senate declared them all gods was order the construction of their temples.”

Clovis smiled, thinking of the rest of the story.

“So then they tried to _build_ the thing, and it wouldn’t stay up! The Temple of Nefertari went up fine, but the old Aeguptian pharaohs were called gods even when they were alive- _she_ probably thought it was nothing but her due for ruling Rome when the father of her son ran off. The Temple of Virginia Leonidus- that’s the closer smaller one, on this side, the Temple of Nefertari is the one closer to the coast- that was no trouble. But whenever they got more than three feet of construction up for the Temple of Antonius- the ground would wash out, or the mortar would run, there were even a couple of minor earthquakes. After lightning killed the chief architect while he was on site, Stephanos Antonius spent a whole year appealing to his father to let the thing go up. Eventually he begged the Corbulo family to appeal on his behalf as well, and then the priests said that the augurs told them the temple could be built with no mishaps if the patrician families across the empire sent a child each to Alexandria for learning. The Emperor ordered it, the families complied, and the temple was built.”

“Antonius Archimedes _really_ didn’t want to be a god,” Tony said, thinking of the family story he’d grown up on about the incident. It was much less dignified than the one Clovis had told him. “He was a scientist- the man who made Alexandria what it is today. Gods don’t-”

Then he remembered that Jarvis had been the one to tell him all the family stories, and fell silent. Clovis gave him a curious look, and left him alone. They exited into the Tyrrhenian with no incident, just the momentary check of the boat’s tags for relevant cargo information and destination.

“My friend’s son,” Clovis told the dock police to explain Tony’s presence, and winked at him when they weren’t looking. The police didn’t even ask for a scan or name- just waved them on. They hugged the harbor wall of Portus Augusti and veered south at its end, joining the traffic towards the Strait of Messana.

“You can look at the books if you want,” Clovis told Tony. “Just pack them back up again and don’t leave them on the deck to get wet.”

Tony went below the deck-level navigation cabin and hunted through the books. There were boxes and heavy cloth waterproof packages, the books all sorts of sizes. Mostly they were in Antonian script, in a variety of languages, but he found a whole box of books in Furthark, which the Vikings used, and a couple of the waterproof packages had things in the Finnish Vairkhu and some script that used a lot of little lines.

He brought one back up the ladder.

“What’s this in?” he asked, brandishing it at Clovis.

Clovis took it and starting flipping through to look.

“Nihongo or Sinese, I don’t- oh, here,” he said, tapping a page. He showed the relevant passage to Tony. By Clovis’ finger, the script simplified a lot, using only a few lines a character. “Can you recognize Varikhu?”

“I can read it,” Tony told him, frowning a little. “My bu-”

His throat closed up a little. Jarvis-

“The man who taught me,” he decided to go with instead. Jarvis had been a lot of things; and the family butler was the least of them, in his opinion. “He trained in Finland so he was teaching me. He said my writing looked like a two-year-old with his first brush, but I kept practicing.”

“That’s very impressive,” Clovis told him. “Most people never even try to learn it.”

It was… strange, being praised for knowing something like an _alphabet._ The Finns had the monopoly on art of all forms, and their only rival in diplomatic prestige was Judea. If you were anybody important, or were _going_ to be anybody important, you could read and write Vairkhu at least a little. The Finns liked that- it showed willing, even if they wouldn’t deign to write to you in anything but Antonian.

“It’ll be easy to teach you the trick for telling if something’s Nihongo or Sinese, since you already know Vairkhu,” Clovis continued. He let the boat go into cruise mode, letting the navigation computer take over handling their travel. He beckoned Tony through the back door of the cabin and into the galley, where they sat together at the table. “Nihongo has three scripts- kanji, hiragana, and katakana. Katakana is the simplest, and it influenced the Finns’ letters a lot, which is why Vairkhu doesn’t look anything like Futhark, even though they started out with that.”

Clovis took a look at the page for a moment, and flipped through a few more, before pulling out a paper pad and writing a few characters on it that Tony recognized from Vairkhu-  エ, イ, ロand サ.

“That’s epsilon, iod, omicron, and shin,” Tony said. “If you’re transliterating.”

“Right,” Clovis said. “When you’re transliterating katakana the first two are rendered as epsilon and iod still; but the second two are ‘ro’ and ‘sa’. The Finns adapted those for their sounds without changing how they’re written. Some others they changed only a little, like the katakana we’d write as aleph-”

Tony happily let Clovis go on and on about the intricacies of written Finnish and Nihongo and Sinese, and then eventually Hindi and Malay, illustrating things on his paper pad. The navigation computer _ping_ ed them when they passed Neapolis, and Clovis stopped talking only long enough to make sure everything was still on-point before going back to his lecture.

When they reached the Strait they stopped for lunch in Messana, eating dockside while the credentials for the boat were verified by the naval presence so they could be let through the blockade. Clovis bought food for both of them, from a vendor who apparently knew him well.

“Mazzito!” the woman said, leaning over the front of her booth to look at Tony. “Stealing children, now? Get married, have your own!”

“I’m contributing to a long and proud tradition,” Clovis told her. “Ferrying runaways to Alexandria. That’s how _I_ got there- it’s only fair I keep it going.”

By late afternoon they could just barely see Crete, and Clovis was asking him if he wanted to stop for dinner and the night in Ierapetra or one of the outlying villages when he stopped, suddenly, staring out to sea.

“Tony,” he said urgently. “Go below decks. Take your pack and find somewhere secure to hide- its better they not know you’re aboard.”

“What?” Tony asked, confused. “Is it the police?”

Clovis pointed discreetly over the water, where another boat, larger than their own, was fast approaching.

“A rule of the sea, Tony- if a boat approaches you unhailed, its pirates.”

The last Tony saw of Clovis, before he closed the hatch to the cargo hold with the books to get into the boat’s tiny ventilation system (because who ever looked in the vents, he reasoned), was the man pressing the panic button that would provide a lock on the boat’s navigational computer for the police.

-

The pirates knew about the tracker in the navigational computer. They also knew about the secondary tracker embedded in the hull, right by the waterline on the back of the boat. It was there to make it simultaneously very obvious when you’d taken it out, and dangerous to remove while in motion.

The pirates were prepared to take it out- they had a newly-purchased standard quick-fix kit and a rig to dangle one of their crew over the side, head-first, to do the entire operation. The adhesive in a standard quick-fix kit would degrade over a couple days in salt water- Tony knew, he’d tested it- and the piece of the hull they’d reattached would fall off into the Mediterranean.

But they were only an overnight stay on Crete and then traveling until lunch to get to Alexandria; or a few hours past lunch to any port on the Judean coast. For a cargo of books, there were plenty of buyers who’d happily pay for the entire hold without even an inspection. The pirates could be in port, cargo gone, and back out to sea in the next day; and to most places in the Mediterranean tomorrow, before the piece came off.

They’d probably go somewhere on the Byzantine coast of the Aegean, Tony decided darkly. The Byzantine’s contribution to the war between the Belgundan alliance and the Burgundan alliance was mostly naval. He and Clovis had passed through part of the Venitz’yan navy today- they were doing a superb job in the blockade of the Aegean, the Strait of Messana, and the Strait of Sicilia, drawing a line from Carthage to Cossira to Lilibaion on Sicilia itself to keep the Byzantine navy penned in so the Roman and Judean navies could maneuver as they liked- but that left them no time or manpower for their regular occupation.

 _‘Bullion and bounty’_ was the phrase he’d heard people used to sum up Venitz’ya. Their merchant marine worked for bullion, gold and silver; their navy for bounty, in the form of taker’s rights for pirate’s ships and pirate’s cargo and the going price per head of a pirate paid by the Mediterranean water police on Cyprus and every country who had a coastal port to threaten. There were stories of pirate ships sighting a Venitz’yan naval vessel and running full speed for the nearest police post to turn themselves in, because the police would keep them alive for prosecution and sentencing.

But now, because of the war, pirates slipped through as the navy focused on enemy forces. If it wasn’t for the war, they would have been safe.

If it wasn’t for the war, he wouldn’t have seen the trail of blood Clovis’s body left as the pirates dumped him overboard after shooting him.

Because of the war, Tony felt no remorse whatsoever for cutting the line of the pirate dangling, unwatched by his crewmates, behind the boat and sending him headfirst into the boat’s propeller. The blood and flesh in the water left a nice trail- maybe someone else would see it and report it.

He crept back into the vents, and, a few moments later, opened the interior maintenance hatch to the boat’s water supply. You could get at it easier from the service crawlspace that technically opened in the galley, but the pirates had no reason to open the door and look, so he felt decently safe doing it.

Tony plunged his hands into the tank and drank as much water as he could stand. Then he ate the boat’s supply of emergency rations, which he’d grabbed before hiding himself. It was a pitifully small amount- but for a boat like this, which Clovis had probably only taken from Rome to Messana to Ierapetra and Alexandria and back again, there really wasn’t any need for food but snacks. These were the most heavily-trafficked waters in this part of the world. A catastrophic mechanical failure in a boat would leave you adrift and unable to call for help if you didn’t have any means of communication but what was built in, but it was rare that any boat dead in the water wasn’t rescued within six hours or so.

After he’d eaten, he again drank as much water as he could stand. It wasn’t a lot, but it was all he’d get for… he wasn’t sure how long.

Then Tony dumped the cocktail of chemical cleaners he’d found in the supply closet, carefully mixed to be odorless and tasteless, into the tank, and reclosed it. He shuffled back into the vents, and waited.

-

He didn’t sleep that night.

The pirates never put into port on Crete, which wasn’t really unexpected. Crete was the second-most police-populated place in the Mediterranean, after Cyprus itself, which the police outright owned. They turned the boat onto a new heading after finding the man assigned to fix the gouge in the boat from taking the tracker out dead. It was almost due south, and Tony realized they were probably aiming to put to shore at or near Cyrene to sell their stolen cargo instead of pressing for Alexandria- the less time they were in the water, the less likely it was that someone would notice the unrepaired, tell-tale gouge in the boat.

Tony _had_ to go to Alexandria.

He couldn’t go to sleep- he risked being discovered if he did, if he fell asleep and moved around in the vents; and was too tight-strung to relax anyhow. He’d never be safe on this boat as long as there were living pirates on it.

His stroke of luck, if it could be called that, was that the pirates hadn’t thought to bring any food aboard before the larger boat had departed, leaving the squad that was to handle the boat and report back without anything to eat until they landed. Every single member of the crew had some water from the ship’s supplies before they went to bed.

Tony watched through the night as they developed various symptoms of poisoning- sweating, difficulty breathing, vomiting, tremors and twitches, joint aches, dizziness, and headaches. They lost body fluids fast, becoming dehydrated- so, like everyone else who knew about basic sick care, they drank more water to make up for it.

By morning, the ones who were still alive were too weak and fatigued to move or make much noise. Some of them, Tony thought, might have been outright hallucinating, but he wasn’t sure.

He quietly crept out of the vent into the galley, where most of the pirates had bedded down for the night. The one in charge and her second-in-command had taken the two bedrooms, but they were in just as bad a state as the pirates in the room around him.

Tony didn’t dare to get close and check to see how many were still alive. If _he_ had been one of the pirates, he would have faked worse symptoms than he had to catch anyone who might have been tampering with their supplies.

So, instead, he closed the door to the deck, making sure the airtight seal was engaged. Then he checked the seals on the windows, the cargo hatch, and finally on the vent he’d been spying through. The seals on the deckhouses of boats were meant as a safety feature, allowing people stuck on a rapidly-sinking ship to lock themselves up in a waterproof container with a supply of air that would detach and float in the water close to the surface, a bit like a submarine, so the police could haul out the survivors when they arrived.

The last thing Tony did before going through the lowered door to the boat’s bedrooms was turn the gas stove on high, without lighting it.

The door from the deckhouse to the first bedroom had a seal, as well. Tony checked it, trying not to breathe so shakily, as he avoided looking at the head pirate, who was lying in Clovis’s bed.

Most people with boats who went seafaring regularly kept a gun onboard, in the bedroom. Tony found Clovis’s rattling loose in the bottom dresser door.

Carefully, Tony picked it up. It was a little heavier than he’d expected, but not by much, and the safety was still on. He turned it off. He took the shortest look he could at the pirate in the bed, then closed his eyes, lifted the gun, and fired a couple shots at her.

Then he ran from the bedroom into the next, not looking, never looking, he wasn’t going to look, and finished the magazine in the other pirate.

Since this was a small boat, the second bedroom was designed to quickly be repurposed as more cargo storage if the need arose. Tony dropped the gun to the floor and scrabbled at the cargo hatch, holding his breath to avoid the scent of blood. He finally yanked it open and dashed down the ladder, pulling the hatch shut after him. It was dark in the hold, but he didn’t care- he just kept moving until he got to the other side of the boat, found the third ladder, and emerged from that hatch onto the deck.

Once on the deck, he vomited over the side, into the Mediterranean, until his stomach was empty. He was shaking as badly as the poisoned pirates had been and vision was blurry and Cyrene couldn’t be far, he knew that, but he _couldn’t_ go to shore he _couldn’t_ it wasn’t Alexandria he didn’t know anyone there he didn’t know anyone in Alexandria but his father had gone to Alexandria Clovis had been going to Alexandria and Antonius Archimedes Nikephoros was his ancestor and he’d _built_ Alexandria and Tony could handle himself once he got to Alexandria, he _knew_ it.

So he stumbled into the navigation cabin, somehow managed to get the computer to take the boat on course to Alexandria, and stuffed himself in the join of the console and the cabin wall.

-

The water police stationed in Alexandria first noticed the rogue boat when it careened into the harbor, completely out of the bounds of the traffic lane and headed for a collision with the harbor wall. The closest police boat was a mid-range officer with two cadets on field training. When the rogue boat didn’t respond to hailing, one of the cadets jumped onto it as it raced past.

 _“YONATAN!”_ the officer screamed at him over the roar of the engines.

The cadet ignored her and dashed into the boat’s navigation cabin. There was a kid, one who was still of the age to get into minor trouble be called a ‘scamp’ for it, huddled defensively within. Yonatan ignored him momentarily but for one of his winning smiles to get the boat under control and pulled over. When that was done, he knelt down next to the kid.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m a police officer. You can call me Yoni.”

He heard the police boat he’d been on pull up to the side and cut its engine. His training officer and training partner hopped on board.

“That’s my friend Benyamin,” Yoni told him, pointing a thumb over his shoulder at the big man. “He’s with me. Who’re you?”

The kid licked his lips, but they stayed dry. Yoni started making a mental list: residue of blood spatter on the deck. Dehydrated, terrified kid who looked like he was fast approaching shock and unconsciousness. An out-of-control boat.

Some sort of catastrophe out on the sea.

“Tony,” the kid rasped. “Tony Stark, there were-”

His eyes flickered over to the door to the galley, where Benyamin and his training officer were starting to disengage the seal.

“There’s gas!” Tony Stark said loudly, and then keeled over, unconscious.

They waited for a medical boat and some police specialists, who were the ones that cracked the door and found the murdered pirate crew.


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for panic attack and mentioned death

It smelled like chemical cleaners, and Tony really didn’t want to think about those. Ever. Not ever again- he could live as long as Stephanos Corbulo’s soldier Lucan, and it would never be long enough to have thought of chemical cleaners again.

There were beeping noises, and when he managed to open his eyes it was off-white and pleasantly lit and the windows were big and sparkling.

Alexandria, then.

He’d made it.

The nurses kept him awake long enough for a doctor to come and check on him and ask him a few questions that his memory got fuzzy on immediately after they’d been asked. He wasn’t sure if he ever answered the last one, because he thought he drifted off again. The next time he paid attention could have been fifteen minutes later, or day- either way, the doctor was gone and so were the nurses.

One nurse poked his head in before ducking out. A little bit later, he returned with a police officer.

“Antony Stark?” the officer asked.

Tony looked dully at her until she continued.

“We called your father,” she said. “He’s in Memphis right now. He’s probably on his way righ-”

“You told him I was here and about the pirates and he said that as long as the hospital did its job I’d be fine, I could take care of myself, thank you for your time officer, but I must be off,” Tony told her flatly. “He’s not coming.”

The officer looked very uncomfortable.

“No, I suppose he probably isn’t,” she admitted eventually. “We looked into the personal affairs of Clovis Mazzito. He has no close living relatives, so when we reported on the entire incident to the Grand Council of Alexandria, they elected to award you the boat and its cargo as bounty for the pirates, along with the usual monetary sum per pirate. The bounty is higher than normal because of the proliferation, so I believe the total sum comes out to 3,480 credits. It’s been deposited into your account.”

 _280 credits a head,_ Tony calculated. _A little more than a hundred over peacetime bounties._

“We’ll need to take a statement from you at the headquarters here in the city when you’re discharged-”

“Yes. Okay. Fine. I know,” Tony snapped.

The officer left the information for the headquarters in his scroll computer and left.

The next time a nurse stopped in, Tony asked for the names of the best schools and teachers in Alexandria.

-

It took four psychologists and two medical doctors before Tony managed to wring out the address of a testing center for someone who had academic affiliations.  It took another three psychologists and five medical doctors before Tony was allowed to be _escorted_ to the testing center.

He took the opportunity to take in Alexandria.

Boats roared through the canals, and people walked swiftly from place to place.  Every sixty-five seconds, a new train roared into the Library Station.  The entire city was bright as could be, and the Tower loomed above it all like something from a tale.

Tony waited impatiently behind his escort as the doors were palmed open.

“Doctor Michoel Métarsh, here with Antony Stark for assessment in room 359 on Level Two,” Tony’s escort recited with boredom.

The doors slid shut behind them.  The faint pressure of high-speed elevation made Tony’s ears pop, but was otherwise uneventful.

“Welcome to the Library,” an automated voice said as the elevator slid to a stop.  “The time now is eleven hours and sixteen minutes from midnight, and five hours and sixteen minutes from sunrise.  Room 359 is to the left as you exit the elevator, within Sector 5A.  Please watch your step as you exit the elevator, and have a nice day.”

Tony grimaced as Doctor Métarsh grabbed his hand as they exited the elevator.  It wasn’t like Tony was two or something.  He _was_ capable of following his escort without wandering off.

When they arrived at Sector 5A, Doctor Métarsh placed his hand on a palmreader.  “Doctor Michoel Métarsh and Tony Stark for the Intellectual Evaluation Testing Center, appointment at eleven-twenty.”

The palmreader turned green, and the doors to Sector 5A slid open.  “Enter,” said another automated voice.  “Please take a seat in the waiting area until the appropriate room is available.”

Tony looked around curiously as Doctor Métarsh sat down.  The room was bare, just white walls, windows, and chairs.  The far wall had ten doors, each labeled with a number between 350 and 359.  Each door had a small red light in the center of the top third of the rectangle, along with the word _OCCUPIED_ gleaming below it.

After a moment, the light on the door of room 354 suddenly blinked green, and the door opened.  A slim woman with light brown hair left the room, and proceeded to exit Sector 5A.  The door now had a green light, and blinked the word _UNOCCUPIED_ at the observer.

A breath later, the light on room 359’s door blinked green, the word _OCCUPIED_ became _UNOCCUPIED_ , and a tall gangly boy with fluffy red hair left the room.

“Antony Stark,” the automated voice said, “Please proceed to room 359, and await further instructions.”

Tony frowned.  He wasn’t sure that he liked the idea of just doing as he was told…but he _did_ want to be enrolled in a school.

He walked into room 359.

The room was barely larger than a closet, with a single window that looked out over the singular canal between the Library and the Old Royal Palace Complex.  A small chair was placed facing a shimmering blue wall, which Tony assumed was a holo-screen.

“Antony Stark,” the automated voice returned.  “Please shut the door and engage the locking mechanism by depressing the large crimson button.  Following those actions, please be seated and await further instructions.”

Doing as he was told, Tony mused that, by the end of the day, he was going to _hate_ the words “await further instructions.”

Uncountable “await further instructions”es later, Tony was absolutely sure that he would be thrilled to never hear those words again.  Finishing his last answer to the stupidly long test provided on the holo-screen, Tony glared at the walls and dared the computer to say the words.

“Thank you for completing your assessments, Antony Stark,” the now-very-creepy automated voice said (Tony had decided that, if he ever built a computer that needed a voice, he would make it _definitely not creepy_ ). “Please depress the locking mechanism and exit the room.  Your scores will be processed and sent to the appropriate authorities immediately.  The time is now eighteen hours and twenty-four minutes past midnight, and twelve hours and twenty-four minutes past sunrise.  Have a nice day.”

Stretching as he left the room, Tony snorted to see that Doctor Métarsh had fallen asleep in his chair at some point while Tony was working. 

Tony contemplated leaving without the idiot, but decided that that would be cruel to the idiot.  Instead, Tony pinched the man’s nose, and began to time how long it would take the man to wake up.

Doctor Métarsh gasped awake thirty-two seconds later.

“What in Ishtar’s name did you do that for?” Doctor Métarsh demanded, grabbing Tony’s arm as he got to his feet.

Tony blinked at him.  “I wanted to know how long it would take for the oxygen deprivation to send alarms to your brain and wake you,” he said.  It was true.  The fact that he might have been comparing it to the statistics that he already knew from years of trawling the Internet for information…was not something he was about to volunteer to the idiot.

Doctor Métarsh’s shoulders sagged.  “Well, you’ll sure fit right in with most of the population of _this_ city,” he mumbled.  “Let me check your results, so that I can see where we’re off to next.”

Pulling out his computer scroll, Doctor Métarsh stared for a few moments, and then suddenly made a startled noise and dropped it on the ground.

Tony, aided by his (significantly) shorter stature, snatched the scroll from the floor.

 _Antony Stark is eligible for all classes provided in Alexandria.  Level Five status is granted.  Recommended first schools include the Antonius Archimedes School of Science, the Pythagorean School of Physics, and the five-day lecture series on mechanical engineering beginning tomorrow at noon in room 733 on Level Three in the Library.  Apartment status pending_.

Tony handed the scroll back to Doctor Métarsh with only a tiny amount of guilt.  Doctor Métarsh’s lips twisted. 

“I supposed you read that?”

Tony nodded.

Doctor Métarsh heaved a sigh.  “Well, we’ll take you back to the hospital for the night, and you should have received an apartment assignation in the morning.  Aside from mandatory appointments twice a week with a qualified Doctor of the Mental Sciences or Psychiatry, you’re done.”

Tony barely managed to withhold his cheer of pleasure at the thought of being free of the hospital.

-

The hospital began processing release information precisely seven hours after midnight.

Tony woke up at six.

By seven and a half hours after midnight, the sun was already blazing down on Alexandria, and Tony was free of the hospital (Aside from mandatory visits to the Psychiatric Unit twice a week for the next year, but Tony was _definitely_ going to test the mandatory-ness of those visits).

After buying something called “G’vina Belkhim” (which seemed to be a pita with cheese melted inside), Tony pulled out his computer scroll and opened up his mailbox.

“Key phrase,” Tony said. “To know is to know that you know nothing.  That is the meaning of true knowledge. Socrates.”

The holo-page shimmered, and Tony’s mailbox opened. 

_Tony Stark has 3 new messages._

_1: Addressed to Antony Antonius Stark, From the City of Alexandria.  Subject: Apartment Assignation._

_2: Addressed to Antony Antonius Stark, From Yerakhmiel Bét Geula, Doctor of Mechanical Engineering.  Subject: Lecture Series at Noon_

_3: Addressed to Antony Antonius Stark, From the City of Alexandria.  Subject: Mayoral Elections._

Tony blinked.  Apartment assignation?  That meant – where he’d live!  He tapped the first message.

_To Antony Antonius Stark, From the City of Alexandria, Greetings._

_Your assessment scores have indicated that you can be accorded two honorary titles of Doctor in the fields of Nuclear Physics and Geometry.  If you should choose to complete a practical exam, four other, non-honorary Doctorates, are available._

_As a high-scoring member of the Alexandrian citizenry, you have been assigned to apartment 2001 on Level Five, in The Tower.  The locks are currently retinal, pulse, and DNA attuned.  An informational package is recorded in the apartment, with more information about the benefits of being a Level Five citizen._

_Please be aware that Level Five citizenship can and will be revoked should the Five Laws of Citizenship be broken, or should your assessment scores fall below Level Four before you reach the age of seventy.  Exceptions include serious injury and mind-control, as will be further outlined in the informational package._

_Please sign into the Tower before 2359, 03-02-1822._

_ The City of Alexandria  _

Tony rolled his eyes at the message.  So, basically, he was smart, and they were rewarding him.

But he should probably look up the whole “Five Laws of Citizenship” thing.

Starting to walk in the direction of the Tower, Tony pulled open the next message.

_To Antony Antonius Stark, From Yerakhmiel Bét Geula, Doctor of Mechanical Engineering, Greetings._

_I was notified that you have secured an invitation to the Lecture Series today at noon.  Before the series begins on Level Three in the Library (Room 733), a small group of scientists like myself will be gathering to discuss what the war in the North means for those of us who live in Alexandria.  You are welcome to attend, food will be provided.  We will be located in room 732 on Level Three in the Library, and will open the doors one hour before noon._

_Welcome to Alexandria,_

_Yerakhmiel Bét Geula, Doctor of Mechanical Engineering._

Tony stopped, pocketing his computer and staring up at the Tower.

It was a work of art, gleaming into the sky like the trail of air left behind from a rocket.  (Speaking of which, he should actually build one, now that he was in Alexandria and no longer confined to theory.  Maybe he could actually make one fly).

This was his new home.

It was time to be set free, and _invent_.

-

Tony figured he had enough time before the pre-lecture series discussion- it could be interesting, and it wasn’t like he’d gone shopping for groceries or anything yet- to go up to his new apartment.

“Antony Antonius Stark,” Tony told the main Tower of Alexandria elevator as he entered. It was much bigger than the one in the Library, and the walls were lined with seats. He wondered if he could get the computer system to accept simply ‘Tony Stark’. “Apartment 2001 on Level 5.”

“Doctor Antony Antonius Stark,” it replied; and wow, this one had the same creepy automated voice. He’d _really_ have to work on improving that. They should make them sound passably human, first off, none of this electric monotone business. Then make sure they could simulate some _personality,_ seriously, it wasn’t _that_ hard.

It was kinda cool that the computers already had him down as ‘Doctor’, though. The city hadn’t been kidding about those honorary Doctorates.

“Please secure one of the provided rebreathers to your person,” the elevator continued, sliding out a compartment with a selection of them in different sizes. A yellow light went on over the doors as they closed. Tony took the smallest one and attached it to his face. “Once you have been seated and engaged the restraints, we will proceed to Level 5.”

He took a seat and pressed the button to deploy the restraints. The yellow light switched to red; and the elevator exploded into motion. Tony was dizzy for a moment from the sudden acceleration, and then started wondering about how they _did_ it-

Surprisingly soon for the rate of acceleration he’d estimated his travel at, the elevator slowed, and stopped. The light over the door turned yellow again, and he unbuckled himself. The rebreather drawer extended again, he replaced the equipment, and it slid closed.

The light turned green; and the doors opened.

“Welcome home, Doctor Antony Antonius Stark.”

Tony stepped out, and _stared._ The doors closed behind him as he caught his breath. In front of him, there was a curved wall of nothing but glass. He dropped his pack to the floor and ran over to press his face against it, looking out wide-eyed over the view.

From this portion of the apartment, he could see over the tops of all the other towers in Alexandria- not that there was much other construction on Level 5- and out over the Mediterranean for _miles_. The sky was completely clear today; andhe could see some of the massive cargo ships and passenger ships coming in, and they were barely specks on the water, visible only because the white wakes they left on the sea. The rock mass of the Antonian Gate was a faint line, far below. Following the line of the coast west, Tony realized that he could see beyond Thonis-Kanopos, and that the smudge of an outcropping near the horizon line was Trashid. Inland, the green of the farms of the coastal Nahal Valley spread out in a patchwork, and the Mediterranean Rail line to Pelusium and then onto the hub in Jerusalem was a glowing silver-white tracery of thread in the sun.

Tony followed the wall to his right, away from the kitchen and dining area. This was the seating area for guests, and the far corner was set up with walls of bookshelves, a door leading to a separate portion of the apartment- probably the bedroom.

There were books on the shelves already, which was strange, because Tony hadn’t sent for his things from Rome yet. He wandered over and started looking- then recognized them as the books Clovis had been transporting.

Tony jerked away, bile rising in his throat, and staggered backwards onto one of the piles of floor cushions lining the seating carpet. He lay there for a few minutes, trying to decide what to do with the books.

The apartment chimed softly at him.

 _“What?”_ he demanded.

“Doctor Antony Antonius Stark,” a pleasantly not-creepy voice said. It wasn’t a very _good_ approximation of a human voice, but it was _so_ much better than the other computers. “This is an automated query from the City Computer Network to register your user preferences.”

“Great,” Tony said, sitting up. This was a welcome distraction from the books. “Can you stop calling me Antony Antonius Stark?”

“Your preferred name options are Doctor Antony Antonius Stark, Doctor Antony Antonius, Doctor Antonius Stark, Doctor Antony Stark, Doctor Antonius-”

Well, that was an unfortunately obvious pattern.

“Doctor Stark,” he said firmly. Somehow, he’d get it to call him ‘Tony’ eventually.

“Doctor Stark,” the computer continued smoothly, and Tony suddenly found himself disliking it. It was too… sycophantic. It set his nerves on edge. “Would you like to be registered as an observer of Shabbat?”

“No, I don’t take _any_ religious holidays.”

The computer asked him some more things- any furniture he’d like added or removed, his dietary restrictions, if he’d like to sync his outside accounts with his profile on the City Computer Network.

 _No, none, and absolutely never under any circumstances_ were Tony’s answers; but he did get the computer to arrange for his things from Rome to be shipped, and apparently a perk of living on Level 5 was that the computer managed his groceries. All he had to do was give it a list.

Tony thought that was convenient, and provided one while privately promising himself he’d make a computer that wasn’t somehow _wrong_.

Then, it was time for the pre-lecture discussion. Library 732 Level Three was easy to find- but it was harder, getting to the library without the distraction Doctor Métarsh had been. It was so much easier to notice all the _people-_

The Library elevator was a relief, and the exclusive company of Room 732 even more so. People looked at him strangely as he walked in, but no one actually stopped to ask where his parents were. _That_ was a nice change from Rome.

It occurred to Tony, halfway through listening to two military scientists talking strategy, that it could be they assumed he _was_ someone’s kid, who’d just wandered in, and the Alexandrian mindset of teaching anyone who’d stay still long enough to potentially hear what you had to say was why they hadn’t kicked him out.

He’d have to come up with some way to stick out a little- something better than a nametag. Maybe he could convince the computers to announce him whenever he entered the room. He could make himself glow, but that was obnoxious, and a lot of people could do that. ‘A slight glow’ described 96% of Delta-level mutations. Nobody would look at him twice.

The lecture itself was interesting enough, but Tony found himself flagging halfway through it, exhausted for some reason he couldn’t figure out. He left as soon as the lecture was done, telling himself he’d make contact with Doctor Bét Geula (he _knew_ that name, it was an important name, why couldn’t he remember why) at the next lecture, and do exciting things with science then.

The crowds in Alexandria going back were _intolerable._ He couldn’t stand to look at anyone and had to concentrate on not running- there were too many people, someone was watching him, someone was just _waiting_ for him to mess something up, running would only prove there was something wrong with him-

The Tower of Alexandria was never such a welcome sight.

He hurried inside, headed for the elevator, but then-

“Doctor Antony Antonius Stark!”

Oh, he was _so_ going to have to train people out of calling him that. Everyone, absolutely everyone, everyone ever, if anyone ever called him by his full name again he might just-

Tony didn’t stop, just kept going for the elevator; but someone tried to grab him from behind just before he reached the doors. He spun around, shoving the hand away.

 _“What?”_ he half-screeched.

You couldn’t _do_ that people shouldn’t _do_ that people _shouldn’t **touch** him-_

The scientist who’d grabbed him seemed completely unconcerned by this reaction, and why was that, what sort of people did this woman work with, was Alexandria _that_ full of people who didn’t think before they acted-

“This is your official, in-person notification of the submission of your name for the ballot of the election of the Mayor of Alexandria,” she continued. “Congratulations.”

“I never submitted a _thing-_ ”

“It’s an automatic system. Anyone with Level Five clearance is eligible.”

Tony remembered, suddenly, his third, unread message from the City of Alexandria.    

“Well, make me ineligible!” he demanded. He needed to get back to his apartment where he could be _alone_ and people were _staring_ they were _looking_ he was _talking_ and it was _loud_ but he didn’t know how _not_ to be-

The woman seemed completely unsurprised.

“You know, people always say that,” she said. “Can’t. There’s no way.”

“So you just _put_ people in charge?” Tony could hear himself and he was starting to sound hysterical, he needed to _leave,_ this scientist needed to _move._

Maybe if he just-

“No, it’s an _election,_ they have to be _elected-_ ”

“That’s a _terrible_ way to run a government!” Tony yelled at her, and dove under her legs and into the elevator, slamming on the buttons. “I’m **_nine_** go _away_ and _leave me **alone!**_ ”

The elevator closed and he managed to get himself strapped in and the rebreather on, somehow; and when he got to his floor he managed a few steps into his apartment before sinking to the floor, trying to focus on his breathing and reading, only half-comprehending, the sign next to the elevator he hadn’t noticed on his first trip here, earlier in the day.

**_ The Five Laws of Citizenship _ **

  1. _The ending of civilizations, continents, planets, the universe, etc. and/or any potential or undiscovered civilizations, continents, planets, universes, etc. is absolutely forbidden and punishable by death._
  2. _Adhere **strictly** to all safety codes, under penalties ranging from exile and stripping of degrees to death._
  3. _The murder of children is morally reprehensible and punishable by death; as is the unjustified murder of an adult._
  4. _Experimentation on sentient beings without their prior, unambiguous, and voluntary consent is the highest breach of ethics and punishable by death._
  5. _Misrepresentation of degrees, credentials, powers, and experience is a security risk and a public safety hazard, and is punishable in every circumstance except for misrepresentation in the case of preserving personal health and safety by fines, exile, demotion, and/or death._



-

Heading to Level Five would probably be terrifying, if Virginia hadn’t grown up practicing her balance by walking the clothesline between two buildings in Medyolana.  But then, Virginia had always taken after her great-aunt Patrice too much.

Medyolana didn’t have all of the pesky building restrictions that Rome had, so it had been one of the first Roman cities to have buildings that topped fifteen stories.  Virginia had been seven the first time that she had balanced herself on the clothesline between the sixteenth floor of her building and the neighboring building.

Aunt Patrice had just built her a harness that would keep her from going splat if she fell.

Her mom, when she found out, had fainted.

That had set the pattern for the remainder of Virginia’s childhood.  When she had accidentally set off (broke) an ancient magical alarm and coated the city with honey, Aunt Patrice had laughed, her mom had fainted.  When she finished mandatory schooling for citizens of Roma (three years early), Aunt Patrice had given her a personal boat.  Her mom had squealed like a dolphin and flopped into her chair.

When Virginia was fifteen, and society demanded that she participate in the stupid political parties while wearing frilly dresses, Aunt Patrice had given her a handbag that was actually a case filled with everything a person could possibly need for “Safe Sex.”  Her mom had fainted dead away when Virginia had been caught testing said kit with the Queen Alix XXI of Narbonne and Alix’s three husbands.

When Virginia was sixteen, Alix had paid Virginia’s passage to Alexandria.

When Virginia turned seventeen, Aunt Patrice sent her a digital form of _The Great Genealogy_ , the only book which contained the family trees of literally every important person in the world.  Alix and her husbands had dropped in for a visit as well, one that got Virginia impressed looks whenever she took her meals in her building’s common cafeteria.

For her eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth birthdays, Virginia went to Narbonne. 

When she was twenty-one, Aunt Patrice died in her sleep, and Virginia inherited her entire estate.  While dealing with the insanity that is Roman inheritance laws, Virginia gained a reputation with the international lawyers for being terrifying.

When she was twenty-two, she began her second doctorate, this time in something that she had gained a taste for: Administration.  For her twenty-third birthday, Virginia reorganized the entire Health Care System in Narbonne.

On her twenty-fifth birthday, Virginia was pulled into a conference with three of the members of the Alexandrian Council.

“You will work with one of us,” Doctor Mossa Amphis declared, as if Virginia had no choice.  “Your organizational skills cannot be wasted on things like _monarchies_ or _children_.”

“Indeed,” agreed Doctor Adlbert Worthington.  “We cannot allow such a thing.”

Virginia stared at them, three old men with high opinions of themselves. 

She left for Narbonne the next evening.

On her twenty-sixth birthday, Virginia spent the entire day in bed, and the week following reorganizing the Public Library of the Royal Family of Narbon.

Two months later, Virginia hid beneath her own bed, clothed in a bedsheet, and watched as Franx soldiers slaughtered all three of Alix’s husbands.

Of Alix’s five children, not one survived that first encounter with the Franx.

After killing fifteen soldiers with Alix’s ceremonial sword, Virginia and Alix fled for Roma.

Alix went to war.  Virginia went back to Alexandria.  She might be able to kill people with a blade in her hands, but Virginia was no trained warrior.  She would be more help supporting Alexandria than she would in Roma.

Barely two weeks after her return to Alexandria, though, Virginia was beginning to regret it.

“As I told you before, and shall likely tell you again, _Doctor Worthington_ , I am perfectly happy arranging for the dispersion of food throughout Alexandria.”  Virginia snapped.  “I do _not_ have any intention of helping you with your Mayoral Campaign.  With absolutely no offense intended, _please leave me alone before the security system checks my blood pressure and decides that you are a threat._ ”

Worthington stood up, his chair screeching along Virginia’s office floor.  “You will regret this, Potts.”

Virginia bared her teeth.  “My name is Doctor Virginia Potts, _Doctor_ Worthington, and I advise that you remember that.”

Worthington stormed from the room, and Virginia took the moment to rest her forehead on her desk.  “Computer, what is next on my agenda?”

“From eleven zero zero to twelve-thirty, reorganizing the distribution of Narbonni cheeses due to the loss of Cargo Ship 12 yesterday.  From twelve-thirty to thirteen zero zero, Doctor Stane from Level Four has requested an interview about joining a weapons project.  From thirteen zero zero to fourteen-fifteen –”

“Mute,” Virginia groaned, pinching her nose.  “Reschedule – Cheese redistribution from twelve to thirteen-thirty, shorten midday rest period to thirteen-thirty to fourteen-fifteen, resend stock refusal to Doctor Stane, reply to all further messages with my stock out for lunch reply.  Greenlight when this is accomplished, do not unmute.”

There was a moment of blessed silence, and then the top of her desk blinked green.

Standing up and stretching, Virginia stripped off the more formal Roman-style dress and changed into the significantly more practical Alexandrian robe.  Kicking on her sandals, she pocketed her computer scroll and headed for the elevator.

“This is Virginia Potts, Doctor of Physics and Administration.  Level One, Ground Floor, please.”

Fifteen minutes and a shawarma later, Virginia was feeling much more like herself.  Seated on Observation Deck 14, which was off of the seventh floor of Level Two in the Tower, she idly drank a cheap Aeguptian beer and watched the city go by.

She had just about drained the bottle when her earpiece _ding_ ed.  “Urgent message from: The City of Alexandria.”

Startled, Virginia dropped her beer on the floor, the glass shattering rather spectacularly.  Grimacing, Virginia scrambled for a way to clean it up.  “Message accepted, this is Virginia Potts, Doctor of Physics and Administration.”

Someone behind her huffed, and the glass pieces vanished.  Feeling her cheeks pink at the realization that she had, yet again, shown off how blatantly _not-mutant_ she was (previous times including several power outages during her childhood, and the mandatory testing upon entry to Alexandria), Virginia focused on the message.

“Message from: The City of Alexandria.  Doctor Virginia Potts, you have been reassigned to work for Doctor Antony Antonius Stark.  Your replacement will arrive in your office at twelve hours after midnight precisely.  Your lodgings will be moved from Level Two to Level Four, and your new apartment is now room 1962 on Level Four of the Tower.  Please report to the apartment of Doctor Antony Antonius Stark within the hour.  Doctor Antony Antonius Stark’s apartment is apartment 2001 on Level Five of the Tower.”

Swallowing back something nasty, Virginia sprinted for the public elevator, stabbing the button for the seventh floor of Level Three.  She’d have to rush to get there before her things were cleaned out.

Carrying every personal item that had made its way to her office, Virginia staggered into one of the private elevators.  Palming open the button screen, she typed in _Virginia Potts, Doctor of Physics and Administration, to see Doctor Antony Antonius Stark, Apartment 2001, Level Five._

A rebreather was ejected from the wall.  Mechanically, Virginia followed procedure and waited patiently as the elevator shot skyward.  Finally –

“You have reached your destination,” the computer said coolly.  “The time is now eleven hours forty-three after midnight.  Have a good day.”

Straightening her robes, Virginia stepped into the apartment.  On her left, there seemed to be a kitchenette of some sort – it looked untouched.  Directly before her was a sitting room area that melded smoothly into a partially-filled library.  Furthest to the right was a door that Virginia suspected led to the bedroom.  She took a breath.

“Doctor Stark?”

There was no answer. 

“Doctor Stark?”

Still no answer.

More than a bit unnerved – she still had no idea what this ‘Doctor Antony Antonius Stark’ looked like, was he an old man?  Had he had a heart attack?  Why wasn’t he answering?

Hesitantly, Virginia tapped on the bedroom door.  “Doctor Stark?” she called, “I’m coming in.”

The door hissed open easily – whether it wasn’t programmed with a locking sequence, or it simply wasn’t closed, Virginia wasn’t sure.

The room was empty.

On second thought, empty was perhaps the last word that Virginia would use to describe the room.  The place was filled with _stuff_.

Three metal things were seated in what seemed to be a charging station, and the bedroom desk was literally _covered_ with wires.  Transmitters of three-dimensional holos blinked from various places of the room, half-finished mechanical designs and mathematical equations shimmering in the air.

But still no _person_.

An open door to her left was the bathroom, so Virginia turned to the final door in the apartment that she hadn’t opened.  She slammed her fist into the door.  “ _Doctor Stark?_ ” she shouted.

A dot of light about an inch from her nose appeared – a one-way viewing device?

“My _name_ is _Tony!_ ” the person on the other side of the door snapped.  “Go away!”

Virginia flinched, and dropped the bag that she had forgotten she still held.  For a moment, she thought that she would walk away.  Then, a realization hit her.

_That voice was not the voice of an old man._

_That voice was not the voice of a_ man _._

 _That was a_ child’s _voice_.

Virginia threw her shoulders back.  “I refuse to leave!” she snapped through the door.  “I have been ejected from my office, expelled from a job I enjoyed, and sent up to this ridiculous height to work with you!  I _refuse_ to walk away like some spoilt brat!”

There was a moment of silence, and then the door hissed open. 

“Fine, fine,” the boy grumbled from a few feet away.  A cacophony of sounds made Virginia suddenly aware that the room must be at least partially sound-proofed.  “I’ll take your order, hold the pepper –”

They visually encountered each other at the same time.

Tony, Virginia discovered, was a skinny boy whose head came up to her waist.  He had the pale skin of someone who avoids the sun, and sharp brown eyes with something dark lurking within.  His hair was dark, presumably brown, although it was difficult to tell with the strange shadows cast by a combination of darkness and intense lighting.  His pale skin was smudged with varying shades of brown and black, and he was wearing a tattered robe that Virginia _knew_ was one of the seven that every resident of Alexandria received with their lodgings.

One of the hems was smoldering.

Taking in the skinny boy that was Tony Stark, Virginia wondered what he saw.  Did he see her awful freckles, or her ridiculously washed-out blue eyes?  Did he see the embroidery on her sleeves, or the sagging that told the world that she hadn’t yet changed from her morningwear?  Did he see the bags under her eyes, or the complete lack of anything attractive in her figure?  (As her father had once said, “It’s a good thing that you’re intellectually inclined, because that figure is never going to give a man pleasure or children.”)

Tony blinked.  “Your hair…” he breathed.  “It’s like _fire_.”

Virginia gaped at him for a moment.  “…Really?”

Tony flashed her a smile, revealing four missing teeth.  “It’s totally awesome.  Is that your mutation?”

Virginia felt her heart sink.  “I…actually don’t have a mutation.”

The smile turned into a gape, and Tony lifted a hand to push his hair out of his face, revealing several round, palm-sized burns on his arm.  “You _don’t_?  That’s _awesome!_   You know that red hair is technically a mutation, right?  Well –” As he turned away from the door, Tony swayed on his feet.  “Actually, there are people who think that red hair is the original, and that everyone else is the mutation, but I’m not so into the biological sciences, you’d want someone like Avraham Bét Yisroel or Alspeth Ros.  Maybe Xavier, but I think that he was in Hekassir when the war kicked off, so who _knows_ where he is…”

“Tony!”

Tony froze.  “You called me Tony.”

Virginia blinked.  “You said that Tony was your name.”

Tony turned back around to face her.  “Well, yeah, but that doesn’t stop everyone from humans to computers from calling me some version of ‘Doctor Antony Antonius Stark.’”

Virginia snorted.  “You’re a kid, and you requested that I call you by your given name.  If you want me to call you Doctor Stark, sure, but there is literally no way in the names of Minerva and Diana that I will call you something as pretentious as Doctor Antony Antonius Stark.”

Tony blinked at her again.  “Well, you’re a regular pepper pot.  What did you say your name was?”

Virginia blushed, suddenly horrified as she realized that she had completely forgotten to mention her name.  “I didn’t.  It’s Virginia, Virginia Potts.  I’m a Doctor of Physics and Administration.”

Tony turned away again, burying himself in something metallic that sparked and hissed.   “Alright, Potts, I’ll call you Pepper, yeah?  ‘M busy, now, so come back when something forces you to, or just say that you’re working with me.  I don’t need the complimentary seats on the trains, at the operas, or at any of the fancy restaurants, so you can use them at your leisure.  Ta.”

Virginia gaped at the child (just a child!) as he fussed with wires for a few moments, and then dove to catch him when he literally topped over.

“When is that last time you ate?” Virginia demanded, settling the woozy boy on the floor.  “And for that matter, why do you have burns up and down your arms?”

Tony shrugged.  “It’s a reinforced room, so I thought I’d get to work on these flying things I came up with, they’re called repulsors because they work through repulsion, but I’m still working on getting them totally safe.  When they’re done, you’ll be able to hold one on your bare skin for twenty four hours without so much as a sun tan.”

Virginia scowled.  _I will not be impressed by the ambitious project_.  “You didn’t answer my first question.”

Tony waved a limp hand.  “I don’t know.  JARVIS, when is the last time I ate?”

Virginia wasn’t sure what she had expected – perhaps that Tony had named the automated computer system in the apartment.  What she hadn’t expected was an easy Roman voice with the faintest of Finnish accents.

“It has been thirty-one hours, fifteen minutes, and forty-three seconds since you last ingested sustenance, Sir.  As I have advised, you would be most wise to –”

“Mute,” Tony said, his eyes drooping shut.  “Actually – BAKA!  Tea!”

Something large and metal loomed over Virginia’s shoulder.  Swallowing a squeak of surprise, she shifted out of the way as a hulking robot carefully deposited an enormous flask beside Tony’s limp body.

Tony levered himself upwards, and grabbed at the flask.  “Caffeine, my good friend, you are the gift of life!”

Virginia snatched it away.  “ _Thirty-one hours since you last ate!_   Considering the fact that you have a robot to bring you tea, when in _Hades’_ name was the last time you slept?”

Tony made grabbing motions towards the flask, which Virginia held resolutely outside of his grasp.  “JARVIS!”

“It has been fifty-four hours and thirty-two minutes since Sir last slept, and over two hundred hours since Sir slept in his bed.”

Tony jumped, attempting to reach the flask, and fell back onto the floor.  “JARVIS, you traitor.”

Virginia rolled her eyes.  “There’s no wonder you can’t figure out why these repulsor things aren’t working,” she said sharply.  “Your brain needs real sleep, and real food.”

Tony rolled onto his back and stared at her from the floor.  “You’re ready to _meet_ Hades if you think that I’m going to waste time _eating_ or _sleeping_.”

Virginia pressed her lips together.  “Can we make a deal?  I’ll get you some food, and you’ll sleep for twelve hours.  In return, I will handle all of your messages, scare away people who want to talk to you, _and_ I’ll help you build things if I have time to spare.  Deal?”

Tony pouted.  “Five hours and I want my tea.”

Virginia lifted the flask higher.  “Ten hours and I move into your apartment to make sure you sleep.”

Tony scowled.  “Six hours and I eat while I work.”

Virginia began heading for the elevator.  “Ten hours and I move in!” she sang, waving the flask in the air as she palmed open the elevator.

Tony made an adorable little growling noise.  “Eleven hours and I eat while I work, but you can move in if you want.”

Virginia turned around, facing Tony one last time before she headed down to Level One get her new charge some food. “Deal?”

Tony jerked his head.  “Deal.”  He paused.  “Pepper.”

The doors closed before Virginia could say another word, but she probably wouldn’t have.

As nicknames go, Pepper was one of the nicest she had ever gotten.

And, as the weeks went on, she realized that it was a small price to pay for forcing Tony to eat, sleep, and occasionally bathe.

Two months later, she was cooking some sliced bread in eggs while arguing on her earpiece when Tony stepped out of the bathroom, his hair wet, shorter than it had been a month ago, (there had been a small repulsor accident,) and standing out in every direction.

“No, I repeat, Doctor Stark has positively zero intention of running for Mayor, no matter how many times you put his name on the ballot.”  Pepper flipped the slices of bread.  “And no, I will _not_ stop telling people that he is only nine years old, because he _is_ only nine years old, and anything that gets through to people about how little Doctor Stark wants to be Mayor is good enough for me.”

She paused for a moment, to catch her breath, turn off the stove, and allow the election-person to babble.  Then, sliding the egg-bread onto two plates and filling two small cups with date honey, Pepper cut off the idiot on the other end of her conversation.

“ _Mister_ Malenath, if there was a way to have a _negative_ intention, then that would be how much Doctor Stark wishes to be on the Mayoral Ballot.  Now, _leave us alone!_ ”  Her cheeks a bit flushed, Pepper switched off her earpiece and tossed it onto the kitchen table. 

Tony was wearing a neat blue robe that she had bought the other day, but hadn’t bothered to put on his work-gear yet.  “Egg-bread?” he asked hopefully.

Pepper slid him his plate, and pulled open the re-heater.  “With date honey and tea.  Good morning, Tony.”

Tony flashed her a smile (two new teeth and a fifth one missing), and wolfed down his egg-bread, the date honey mysteriously vanishing as he ate.

“Hey, Pepper?” he said, sipping his tea and meandering in the direction of the workshop.

“Hm?”  Pepper dabbed some of her egg-bread with honey, and ate it carefully.  Honey was so irritating to get out of robes.

Tony dashed forward, his teacup clattering emptily onto the table, and threw his arms around her.

“Thanks, Pepper.”

Pepper sat very still, her mind processing.  Tony was – hugging her?  Tony was hugging her.  He had said – he had said _thanks_ –

“It’s no problem, Tony,” she said, carefully returning the embrace.  “Now, we were dealing with that sputtering issue yesterday, and I had an idea while I was dealing with that idiot from elections…”


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An actual kidnapping this chapter, plus yet more death, again with a child soldier element, and mentions of major bodily trauma

_1825_

Unfortunately, as it turned out, it didn’t _matter_ if you were elected Mayor of Alexandria or not- everyone who ended up on the ballot was obligated to sit on the Grand Council.

Tony _hated_ it; and cursed himself a fool each time Pepper prodded him about having a meeting for not reading the message about the original nomination as soon as he’d gotten it. Alexandria was worth a lot, but sometimes, the Grand Council _seriously_ tested his resolve.

So he hung around in the meetings, half-listening to the Council argue as he idly refined his blueprints. The poor man who’d actually gotten himself elected Mayor of Alexandria- _again,_ apparently this was a running problem of his- was going on about the war again.

“BINYAN can’t be counted on!” he was saying. “Their methods-”

“Were perfectly sound, Doctor Piersi!” Doctor Inari Kivikaivo butted in. “I reviewed their proposals for the project personally!”

“Their _methods_ were untested!”

“Alhandrei,” Doctor Ibn Asad said soothingly. “The theory was sound. _That_ had been thoroughly tested, and the concepts had been accepted medical fact for quite some time.”

“I don’t _care_ how sound the _theory_ was, Rahman!” the Mayor of Alexandria snapped back. “They didn’t do trial tests! You can’t just go _violating procedure_ like that!”

“Well _I’m_ not surprised it turned out so well,” Doctor Hallr said, completely unruffled.

Tony’s quick I’m-pretending-I’m-paying-attention glance up from his tablet caught Doctor Kivikaivo winking at her again. Pepper, and therefore he, were about 80% certain that there was a secret relationship happening there.

 _A Finn and a Viking,_ Tony thought. _Only in Alexandria_.

He went back to ignoring the conversation until Doctor Atsushi Yuasa slammed his hand down on the table and reminded everyone that they were arguing about things BINYAN had _already_ done, so the entire conversation was pointless, and they should move on to the city’s business.

Tony liked Doctor Yuasa. The Doctor of Philosophy was possibly the only person who was qualified to make any reasonable decisions about running a city on the entire Council. He’d considered trying to get to know him better by dropping by his office with one of Clovis’s books in Nihongo to ask for a translation, but he hadn’t worked up the nerve yet.

“ _If_ we may all take Doctor Yuasa’s advice?”

That was Doctor Piersi’s personal assistant, Ovadyah. Tony appreciated his presence- he was as competent as Pepper at managing Alexandrian scientists. He was probably the only reason Dr. Piersi got anything done, honestly, because Tony hadn’t heard of him doing much of anything besides criticize BINYAN for _everything,_ probably up to and including breathing _._

Doctor Piersi sighed, sounding a little angry still.

“If we _must,_ Doctor Stane.”

The meeting turned towards Alexandria’s more immediate affairs of war, things like the regiments or something, Tony didn’t really care. He was a mechanical engineer and twelve on top of that- he knew better than to get involved in a war.

His habitual lack of attention in these meetings was why it took Doctor Hallr screaming a Viking battlecry to get him to even look up after the doors banged open. She’d drawn her sword and was rushing one of the intruders, Doctor Kivikaivo was starting some sort of sorcery, Ovadyah had shoved his old Venedan employer under the table to protect him, Doctors Ibn Asad and Yuasa were out of his range of vision somewhere-

Tony managed to get one look at the people who’d barged in, or at least their face-concealing helmets, before one of them came up behind him and knocked him unconscious. 

-

It was too cold.

Tony kept his room at the precise temperature of 20 degrees centigrade, and wherever he was now, it was too chilly.

Why wasn’t he at home?

Memory returned in a rush.  The meeting.  The attack.  The madmen in green and yellow.  Something hitting his head.

He’d been kidnapped.

Carefully, he kept breathing in the same slow and steady way that he had been.  He didn’t allow a single eyelash to flutter, or a single muscle to move.

He’d been kidnapped.

The room was chilly – about 4 degrees centigrade, if he had to guess, and it smelled like mold and wet.  Something was dripping nearby, and the sound of marching feet echoed from beyond where he was – probably a nearby corridor, rather than within the same space that he was currently…

Tied up.  He was bound to a chair with rope.

Tony struggled to keep breathing steadily, but he couldn’t help but choke when something solid smacked the back of his head.

“I know that you are awake!” someone said through a thick Franx accent.  “Open your eyes, boy!”

His head now splitting, Tony cracked open an eye.  A bulging eye glared at him through a green face mask.  Tony moaned.

“Oh, great. I've been kidnapped by idiots who don't know how to dress themselves in the morning.”

Green-mask snarled and slapped him, and Tony opened his other eye reluctantly.  Four other goons in green and yellow suits stood over him, each wearing an identical green mask-hat-thing. 

“Oh, I'm sorry,” Tony drawled.  “Did I say that out loud?”

Goon Number 1 hit him over the head with the butt of his rifle.  Tony’s ears began to ring.  Even so, he continued to talk.

“It’s not like I meant to _offend_ you or anything…”

The butt of the rifle hit his head again, and this time, Tony passed out.

When Tony opened his eyes again, the five goons had become ten.  One of them thrust something round and shining into his face.  “Do you recognize these?”

Tony sneered.  “Hmm, I wonder?” he mused with a sharply sarcastic note.  “They couldn’t _possibly_ be the repulsors I invented last year!”

Something (probably that damn rifle-butt) smacked the back of his head.  “You will make them for us.”

Tony snorted.  “Yeah, I’m going to go with…no?”

Immediately, the reason for the dripping sound became apparent.  Two of the green and yellow clothed morons dragged a large tub of water from somewhere else in the room.

The goon who seemed to be their temporary mouthpiece waved at the tub.  “You will make them for us, and without those silly ‘safety precautions,’ or you will meet the water with little comfort involved.”

Tony swallowed hard.  They were going to drown him.  Well, it did just figure.  At least everything that wouldn’t be requisitioned to the City of Alexandria would go to Pepper if he died.  “I’m still going to go with no.”

Without untying him from the chair, they shoved his head into the water.

Eternities later, the goon yanked Tony’s head from the water by his hair.

“We will ask again,” the goon snarled.  “You will make these…repulsors…for us.”

Tony struggled to choke down a single mouthful of air, his throat raw and aching all the way down to his chest.  “Still…saying…no…”

Back into the water.

Tony lost count of the times he was shoved into and dragged out of the water.  He was almost beginning to prefer it to the stupid goons – at least the water was silent except for that pesky roaring sound in his ears which reminded him that he was rapidly running out of air.

“You see that man?”

Tony blinked.  Was the goon actually saying something new?  He squinted.

Held in the doorway by three more green and yellow goons was a thin man with a shiny balding head and broken glasses.

Tony didn’t bother to respond, but, as he expected, the goon kept talking. 

“If you build our repulsors,” the goon crooned. “Then the good doctor will be allowed to help you.  To heal you.  Would you like that?”

Tony ripped a raw breath down his throat.  “Bug off.”

Back into the water.

This time, at least, they allowed him the peace and quiet until he floated away into darkness.

When he opened his eyes again, he was face to face with a monster.

Actually, it looked like one of the biological models of a human body without skin.  Tony drew in a painful breath (Was he always going to be so aware of breathing?).  “Whoa, who pulled off _your_ face?”

An equally livid red hand smacked his face, and Tony was abruptly reminded that the goons had slapped him around a bit before the water thing.  The red face pulled further away.

“For a child,” the red-face-man mused, “you have been quite…recalcitrant.”  Yellow-black eyes narrowed.  “Why do you not do as you are told?”

Tony swallowed painfully, and took an equally painful breath.  “Oh, I don’t know.  Maybe because I'm twelve gods-damned years old and you've been attacking me? I've been knocked out, kidnapped, knocked out again, tortured, beaten up, and knocked out yet again! That is _not_ how you hire people!”

Red-face-man looked almost amused.  “Oh?  Enlighten me, little boy.”

Tony coughed, his whole chest seizing with pain, and glared up at the red-face-man.  “There is a gods-damned procedure to hire me to invent something for you, with paperwork and pay and talking nicely to Pepper. If this is how you normally work, it's a wonder that you've got as many fashion-challenged goons as you do!  And you have absolutely lost any megalomaniacally-inclined genius that you might have once had!”

Red-face-man slapped Tony again, hard, and then seemed to become almost thoughtful.  “So…” he breathed, “It is _pay_ that you want?  And paperwork?”

Tony thought quickly.  Pay and paperwork allowed for negotiation and tools and he would be untied and could invent which meant –

“Maybe,” Tony pulled up as much oily greed into his face as he could.  “You might bring me some proper paperwork and _negotiate_ , like an honorable man.  Then we could _talk_.”

Red-face-man smiled – it was terrifying.  “Then we shall do just that.  You shall have your paperwork, and I shall have my repulsors.”  He turned to leave.  “You may call me Yohann Schmidt, Antony Antonius.”

Tony didn’t respond.  He was too busy thinking.  He had an escape to plan.

-

When the paperwork had been taken away- Tony now in possession of a sum most people would call ridiculous for his monthly pay and a contract of dubious legality that entitled him to a set amount of sleep, downtime, and food a day- he was led to a new set of rooms, which he identified as a workshop, bedroom, and bathroom, and locked in.

The man he’d been promised earlier for medical care was sitting on the bed.

“You’ve caused quite the stir around here, Doctor Antonius,” the man said with good humor as he had Tony lie face-down on the bed and take deep breaths, his warm hands acting in place of a stethoscope.

“Just Tony,” Tony demanded.

“Then I will be just Yinsen,” his doctor replied. “I will have to requisition some medicine to prevent you from developing an infection in your lungs or throat, and reduce any swelling, but I believe you will be fine. Do you have any medicinal allergies?”

“No,” Tony told him, wriggling away and off the bed. “Make sure you get them to start moving supplies for working in here when they bring the medicine.”

The next day, they started to work.

Tony had expected it to be slow going, at first, but it proceeded quickly- the supplies came on time, the components were easy to break down, and they were completely undisturbed but for meals.

“I am certain your father is agitating for people to look for you,” Yinsen said over dinner, trying to be reassuring. 

“I might actually _be_ a child, but I don’t need looking after,” Tony snapped. “He’s not looking. He _never_ looks. I ran away from the family house and got captured by pirates and ended up in an Alexandrian hospital for a week and a half before I regained consciousness- it’s been four years since then, and I haven’t seen him _once_. I _know_ he’s been in Alexandria, and he just couldn’t be _bothered-_ ”

He stopped talking in frustration.

“It is a terrible thing, for a parent to neglect their child,” Yinsen said heavily. “I have heard of the great Howard Antonius Stark, but for your sake, my young friend, and as a father myself, I may have to assault him if I ever meet him.”

“You have kids?” Tony asked, and Yinsen brightened some.

“Seven; and a wife and a husband.”

Yinsen regarded him for a moment.

“Your mother-?”

“Dead,” Tony told him. “Having me. And- Jarvis, _he’s_ the only one who cared for me in Rome. There’s Pepper, in Alexandria, but she doesn’t have the power to get anyone but _me_ to do anything.”

“So Alexandria is home, then.”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “And you?”

“The Muslim Empire, in the far east, in the mountains near Maurya. A small town called Gulmira.”

“You’re a long way from home.”

“Such is the life of a scientist,” Yinsen told him; and that was the longest conversation they had for nearly a month after, such was the workload. There was smelting and wiring and soldering and hours upon hours of delicate work, until-

“Three, two, one-”

Yinsen plugged in the last cable and, across the base, power failed for a long moment before flickering feebly back into life, stuttering and throwing shifting shadows everywhere but Tony’s face and hands, illuminated by a hard, blue-white light.

“Is that a repulsor?” Yinsen asked softly.

“No,” Tony told him. “It’s an arc reactor. The first one. They’ve been theoretical since- I really don’t know, forever. Some people say Antonius Archimedes Nikephoros was the first one to think of it, but what _don’t_ people say he thought up-”

There was a perfunctory hammering at the door and some shouting in a language Tony could recognize as Hekassir but not understand; and then Yinsen yanked out every cable in reach, disconnecting most of the power supply to the reactor, and hissed at him to step away from the workbenches with his hands visible.

A short man, rather mouse-looking, with some truly terrible tiny round spectacles sitting in front of his eyes, strode in, flanked by HYDRA soldiers.

The man continued yammering in Hekassir, gesturing angrily at the arc reactor, looking directly at Tony.

“Answer him!” Yinsen said desperately when Tony just stood staring at the man.

“I don’t _know_ Hekassir!” Tony told him. “I know Latin, I know Greek, I know Finnish, I know Alexandrian Aramaic- I never thought I’d have to learn anything else so I could talk to the evil scientists who’d _kidnap me!_ ”

Yinsen took over, talking back at the man in Hekassir, apparently to inform him of Tony’s linguistic deficiencies. The man snarled a question and glared at the both of them while Yinsen translated.

“This man is Armin Zola, Tony, and he wants to know what you’re doing.”

“ _Doctor_ Armin Zola,” the man corrected him icily. Apparently, he knew that much Alexandrian Aramaic.

“Tell him I’ve made the battery for the repulsors, they need a much stronger power source if they’re going to be weaponized.”

Yinsen repeated this in Hekassir and Zola looked somewhat mollified, though he said something low and dangerous to Yinsen before turning on his heel and stalking out.

As soon as the door closed, Tony rounded on Yinsen with questions.

“Who is he? How is he a Doctor if he doesn’t know Alexandrian Aramaic? How do you know him? What does he do?”

“They are watching us, Tony,” Yinsen warned. “They have cameras-”

He gestured, mutely, at the walls and ceiling. Tony pulled a face.

“Really? _Really?_ ”

 “Zola-” Yinsen paused, taking a heavy seat on a bench. He patted the space next to him and Tony took it, swinging his legs in anticipation of answers. “He is no _Doctor_ , no matter that he claims the title. He has never once, to my knowledge, even set _foot_ in Alexandria. He has no right to even the title Master. He is, regardless, HYDRA’s head scientist. He approves and oversees every research project and development initiative HYDRA does, and I would not be surprised to learn that he is the reason for all the strange weapons I’ve seen on the soldiers. As for how I know him-”

Yinsen sighed, and there was an unexpected amount of grief in it.

“There are always some scientists who eschew a life in Alexandria-”

“How could anyone _not_ want to live in Alexandria?” Tony demanded, aghast.

“There are many reasons,” Yinsen told him. “But for my part, it was because while Alexandria is the perfect place to live if you want every waking hour to be learning and academia and research, it is not the ideal environment to raise a family in. When I left for Alexandria, I had already been courting the man I would marry, and we had promised to reunite permanently when I returned. In Alexandria I met the woman we add to round out our relationship- she was from Tehran, and had no qualms about leaving the city to tend for mountain villages so close to the borders. We were all married and our children born in Gulmira, and three of us did very well for ourselves, Tasnim and I both being accredited Doctors. Almas was a sorcerer, of a little power- most people are, that close to Tibet. We were well-liked, and Gulmira became the center of the region because we lived there.”

“But if you were so happy _there-_ ”

“Tasnim and I had friends from Alexandria,” Yinsen continued. “A Judean named Avraham Bét Yisroel, and an Eirean Viking, Conrad Conochvars, who came to Alexandria by way of Byzantium. They came to see us in Gulmira, with a proposition for medical research in Franx. Avraham is the foremost practical expert in mutations, you see, and Conrad second only to him- they had some theories about manipulating the mutant gene to cure physical ills, and wanted specialists in human physiology and medicine to realize it. Almas’s favorite tease was to say he was a country bumpkin for not being as traveled and worldly as Tasnim and I, and we knew it would do the children no harm to live somewhere else for a while, so we left with them to return to Franx, living on some land Conrad had bought with his patron’s money.”

He laughed, darkly.

“We’re sitting on it right now, actually,” he told Tony. “We made quite a lot of progress before the war started, the three of us. Conrad was missing part of his arm, a developmental issue in the womb, and using the formula we’d mostly-perfected, he grew it over the course of a few weeks.”

“ _Minerva_ ,” Tony swore, stunned. “You- He- _Really?_ ”

“Really,” Yinsen confirmed. “When Belgunda and Burgunda began to square off, we split and ran. We’d surpassed the original theory and started doing thought experiments into manipulating the mutant gene into manifesting _specific_ powers and effects, or to shutting down unwanted or inconvenient ones, rather than healing the body- purely theoretical, never to be realized- and we knew that if we stayed, _someone,_ probably the Franx,would eventually come to take our work and do unethical things with it. Avraham took the majority of the work and ran for Alexandria, being the only one who really enjoyed it there, and secure in the knowledge that Alexandria’s laws would prevent it from being used for anything but something like we’d done for Conrad. Conrad took the rest and went to Byzantium, where his patron’s influence would protect him. Tasnim and Almas and I took the children to Iberia, where we were going to catch a boat to Avrika, or Roma, or Aegupt, and take the train home.”

The older man was silent for a while, and Tony, starting to get a sinking feeling in his gut, said awkwardly: “You don’t _have_ to tell me, Yinsen.”   

“No,” he said firmly. “No, I should, so you know the sort of people HYDRA are. Tasnim and I were expecting the Franx to look for us, eventually- but we would have been safely home by then. Our first and only night in Iberia, Zola came, with HYDRA soldiers. Zola told Tasnim and I we would use the research we’d done to make super-soldiers for them. We told him no, and Zola murdered Almas. We- We were going to say yes, then, to spare the children- but our eldest, Ihsan, he- he told us we couldn’t say yes, not ever, and so- we didn’t.”

Yinsen stopped, seemingly unable to say more, but then-

“The next seven times Zola asked; we didn’t. And then he asked us both, again, the HYDRA soldiers holding guns to our heads, as we knelt in the blood of our husband and our children- and I begged Tasnim to say yes, I _begged,_ so they wouldn’t kill her, but then-”

His face contorted into rage.

“Zola turned his gun on her, and murdered her, and then told me it was because _clearly_ I was the most agreeable one. They took me here, and held me while they built the base, and I have not left in- however long it has been. The last news I had of the war was the Franx move on Narbonne. I have done _nothing_ for them with my knowledge, only helped you with your work, and sometimes tended their soldiers, because I am still a doctor, no matter how evil these people may be. They cannot kill me for not cooperating, because what is in my head is too valuable.”

He and Tony sat in silence for a while, Tony trying to figure out how to broach a couple of subjects that were going to be entirely unwelcome.

“I’m really sorry,” he ended up saying. “It’s 1825 now, by the way, you’ve been here a couple years. Uh- I’d like not to have to tell you this, but- I don’t know if you know how smart I am. The minute my test results were processed, which was the first thing I did once I was out of the hospital, I was given the top apartment on Level Five and put on the Grand Council. I was _nine_. I’m probably going to be on the Grand Council for the rest of my life, and-”

Tony took a deep breath.

“Doctor Bét Yisroel got to Alexandria, and ended up working for BINYAN- which _was_ a new, specialized department of the Judean Intelligence Service, made just for the war, but it basically answers just to itself now. He took all that research you did and made _a_ super-soldier, singular, for them. And then HYDRA killed him. The Grand Council got all the reports since it happened in Alexandria, and most of the Council hasn’t stopped arguing about the procedure since. Sorry.”

Yinsen’s entire body deflated, and he hid his face in his hands, shoulders slumped, looking unspeakably exhausted. Tony thought he caught a: _‘God, Avraham; **why?** ’ _before he pressed on.

“And Byzantium joined on the side of Bergunda and Franx, and I haven’t heard of any Doctor Conochvars in Alexandria or anywhere else, and I’d be _really_ surprised if HYDRA isn’t a part of the Franx government or working with their blessings and assistance, so HYDRA probably got their hands on him. Or more likely he wouldn’t cooperate and they killed him too and just nobody noticed. I’m really really sorry, you shouldn’t have to-”

“No,” Yinsen told him, his tone soundly defeated. “No, Tony, thank you for telling me. It’s _you_ who shouldn’t have to listen to troubles as bloody as this.”

“I don’t know if you remember,” Tony said after a minute of silence. “I told you that I’d gotten kidnapped by pirates on my way to Alexandria? I killed them all, the whole crew. Poisoned the water supply in the evening and then gassed or shot anybody who was still alive in the morning. I was too scared to do anything else.”

“No child should have a life like that,” Yinsen told him.

“And no adult should have one like yours,” Tony shot back.

All was quiet again, for some time, until he spoke again, trying to distract himself and his companion from their thoughts.

“So… you’re a medical doctor?” he asked Yinsen tentatively.  

“Yes,” Yinsen told him, seizing on the distraction. “I have experience in surgery and general practice, mostly because Tasnim and I _were_ the medical presence in Gulmira and the area- but my specialization is really adaptive technology, things like rebreathers and hearing aids and prosthetics, physical therapy rigs-”

“Actually,” Tony interrupted him, as quietly as possible to avoid being picked up by the cameras. “That is _incredibly_ useful for the next stage of the escape plan.”

“Escape plan?” Yinsen whispered back, some emotion Tony couldn’t identify sparking in his eyes.

Tony gestured wordlessly at the glowing arc reactor, still sitting on the workbench, and smiled.

-

They justified the extra materials and the skeleton-form of the central part of Tony’s escape plan taking form in the workshop as the necessary support system for the weaponized repulsors.

Five days before the plan was to commence, they hung the skeleton-form on a frame, and started quickly and unobtrusively attaching the components they’d constructed separately, to avoid suspicion. Tony spent hours that day on the computer HYDRA had granted him, using the system uplink he’d scavenged out of old HYDRA uniforms they’d requisitioned under the excuse of needing to test the fabric’s insulation against weaponized repulsor backwash to start placing computer bugs that would, when initiated in the right sequence a few days later, completely lock down the HYDRA base computers and power supply, leaving Tony and Yinsen free to sneak and muscle their way out as necessary.

Tony had taken to wearing, the last few weeks, an outfit made from cutting down the requisitioned HYDRA uniforms, explaining it as protective gear against any minor accidents while working on the weaponized repulsors.  

Three days before they were due to escape, Yinsen donned a similar outfit, stitched together from a few HYDRA uniforms, and Tony started to make the last adjustments to Yinsen’s rig.

It wasn’t his best work- which, of course, meant it was still very good- it wasn’t very pretty, purely functional. Short-use weaponized repulsors rested against Yinsen’s palms, wires protected by metal plating that covered them as they traveled up to a second arc reactor Tony had built, set into a metal breastplate that strapped around his back. It wasn’t much for armor, but hopefully, they wouldn’t have to use it.

Tony was inspecting the wiring, carefully replacing one that looked like it might give at a crucial moment, looking intently at his blueprints, when the replacement wire sparked right as Tony finished securing it.

The repulsor went off, blowing a noisy hole in the wall, and taking out at least one of the security cameras they’d pegged.

Tony and Yinsen froze.

“They weren’t supposed to know I could make them do that yet,” Tony whispered.

“They can’t possibly not know now,” Yinsen said, and pulled his arm away, flexing his arms and shoulders to check his range of movement. “Tony-”

Tony shook himself.

 _“Right!”_ he said loudly. “Okay, time table moving up to _immediately!_ Strap me up, Yinsen, and make sure you get the trigger.”

The door guards were caught completely by surprise when they finally managed to pry the door open and were immediately barreled into by a twelve-year-old in a suit of armor. While they were distracted trying to shoot, Yinsen appeared in the doorway and used repulsor blasts to fell them all, Tony contributing a few of his own. A nod to tell the older man he was okay, and then they were off, dashing as quietly as possible down side corridors to a back entrance Tony had identified on the maps he’d pulled from the base computers.

They ran, hiding momentarily and sneaking as necessary, until they came to a hallway join near their final exit, and Tony barreled straight into Zola exiting his office. The two of them crashed into the wall, Zola wheezing from the impact- but both Tony and Yinsen noticed the panic button he’d pressed in his hand, and suddenly there were guards, in every hallway-

Yinsen shoved Tony into Zola’s office, the only place there weren’t guards, and started firing repulsor blasts as suppressing fire-

 _“I didn’t know this was here!”_ Tony screamed at him. _“It wasn’t on the maps-!“_

“I think it would do us well to find a new escape route!” Yinsen yelled back. He kept firing, shooting and shooting and saw Zola scramble back behind the line of fire- and then a pair of new guards arrived, carting a large version of the strange guns, the ones that glowed smoky blue, between them.

 _“Tony!”_ Yinsen called urgently, focusing his fire there. **_“Tony!”_**

He was distracted, trying to make sure the soldiers didn’t use the big gun, and a different HYDRA soldier, with a more conventional ballistic gun, shot him at an angle in the arm. He screamed in pain, and felt torn wires, caught by the bullet’s path as it burrowed through his flesh, sparking against the wound, making everything worse. His arm wouldn’t stop twitching with the electrical current, and he couldn’t hold off the gun with only one repulsor-

The soldiers, clearly not used to the unwieldy gun, fired it- it was more like a cannon, Yinsen realized, and the shot went just a bit wide, deadly blue eating away at the concrete wall, leaving it black and fuming-

 ** _“Yinsen!”_** Tony screamed, noticing the blast and then, apparently, the blood. _“Dump the rig; fry the circuits and **dump the rig!** ”_

But he couldn’t stop firing, that was the only thing keeping the HYDRA soldiers from pumping him full with more bullets- some of them were streaming away, Zola screaming at them to get back to the lab and-

Another bullet, to the shoulder of the same arm-

And then the straps across his back holding the rig in place were torn away, Tony’s suit exerting more strength the boy himself ever could, and Yinsen dropped to his knees, yanking his good hand out of the repulsor rig and fumbling at the catches on the shoulders so the breastplate would release and he could get the whole thing over his head. Tony was standing above him, firing his repulsors at the soldiers, the occasional bullet _ping_ ing off the armor, a few whistling dangerously past Yinsen. One grazed his head, tearing away a strip of skin and hair.

The rig came away, _finally_ , and Yinsen dumped it over his head, reaching inside for the kill switch just under the reactor. The rig sparked and fizzled and Tony yanked Yinsen back into Zola’s office, slamming the heavy door shut and bolting it just as the repulsors went off in twin small explosions.

For a moment, there was silence- then scrambling by the base of the door, the metallic scraping of whatever was left of the rig being dragged away, Zola’s muffled yelling of new orders, and finally a repeat of the cannon-gun. The office walls shook, and blue fumes curled under the door.

Tony and Yinsen scrambled back from the door. Tony popped the suit’s faceplate, revealing his heavy breathing and frantic expression.

_“Yinsen-”_

“It’s nothing that will kill me,” he said, dismissing the bullet wounds. “They just hurt very, very much-”

“I-”

 _“Tony,”_ Yinsen said urgently. “We must find a new way out, _now._ ”

“I-” Tony repeated again, then took a deep breath, trying to settle himself. “I- okay- um-”

He started looking around the office wildly. There was the desk and a computer and a glassed-off work area and cabinets full of backup paper files and walls and walls of lists and plans and organizational charts and formulas written on every available, easily cleanable surface, mostly the glass of the work area and the windows-

Thank all the gods _windows._

“You still have the trigger?” he asked Yinsen.

Yinsen produced it- a rectangular wireless transmitter, arrayed with seven buttons.

“Okay, don’t lose that,” Tony ordered, and raised his palms towards the nearest window. “Also- _duck._ ”

He fired at the window and it shattered, glass reduced to tiny shards and grains. Tony pulled himself through first, another cannon-shot shaking the walls as he went. Yinsen glanced back just before he started for the window, and saw that the cannon had broken through the door. A HYDRA soldier was pushing through the wreckage, straight for him-

Yinsen slammed his hand down on all the buttons of the trigger at once, and threw it at the soldier before diving through the window.

“What did you-” Tony started to ask.

Yinsen threw his uninjured arm around Tony’s armored neck, magnetizing the tiny plates they’d sewn into fabric to the armor.

 _“Go go go!”_ he screamed, securing his legs the same way. Any second now there would be a catastrophic power failure in the base as the computer bugs, set off together instead of in sequence, collided with each other and blocked up data flow and sent garbled, incorrect orders to every system in the base hooked into a computer-

Tony fired his repulsors in full flight power, and Yinsen managed only a glimpse of the base going up, and the tiny forms of soldiers advancing on the base freezing in their tracks, presumably to stare, before the massive acceleration overloaded his body and he blacked out completely.

-

_Beep.  Bee-op.  Beep.  Beep.  Bee-op._

Keeping his eyes shut, Tony scowled.  He had really had _enough_ of waking up in places that weren’t his apartment.  He felt the slightest bit nauseous as the scent of cleaning chemicals hit his nose with the next slow breath in.

 “Move it!”

“I’m sorry, Miss…?”

_Beep.  Bee-op.  Beep.  Beep.  Bee-op._

Someone was shouting.  Who was shouting?

“ _Doctor_ Potts, and shove it or you _will_ regret it!”

“Doctor Potts, you must understand –”

_Beep.  Bee-op.  Beep.  Beep.  Bee-op._

Pepper was shouting!  Why was Pepper shouting?  Tony struggled to remember – there was an explosion and flying and –

“I _must_ do nothing – Tony has been missing for three gods-damned months, and I’ll be forsworn before I leave him another second alone!  Now _move!_ ”

_Beep.  Bee-op.  Beep.  Beep.  Bee-op._

He was free.  Pepper said that he _was_ missing, which meant that he was no longer missing, which meant that he was back in Alexandria, which meant that he _had done it!_

Which meant that the beeping and clean smell meant that he was in a hospital.  He opened his eyes just in time to see the door parallel to his bed (he was in a bed?) swing open.

Pepper rushed into the room, looking frazzled.  Her hair was falling from a simple braid, and she looked as if she hadn’t slept in quite some time.   A foot or so from the bed, she stopped.

“ _Tony_ ,” she breathed, the sun dawning over her shadowed face like it might if she had seen a miracle.  “Oh, gods, _Tony_ , you’re _alive_.”  She held out her hands for a moment, and then, hesitantly, asked: “Can I sit with you?”

Tony nodded mutely, and Pepper sat down slowly on his bed.  Reaching out, Pepper gently pressed his shoulder as Tony tried to shift into a more upright position.

“Don’t move, Tony,” she said quietly.  “You’ve been in and out of a surgery for the past day, ever since the Police brought you and Doctor Yinsen in from the sea.”

Tony frowned, and focused on his body.  Whatever drugs were pumping through his veins, they were good, because he felt floaty and detached.  When he couldn’t _feel_ the problem, Tony tilted his  head slightly, and his eyes widened.

In the center of his chest was a small metal box, with seven wires spiraling away to attached to various nearby machines.  Around the box, four neat little scar pointed outward, forming an X-shape.

Why was there a box in his chest?

Pepper, who had begun to stroke her hand through his hair, looked pained as she realized what Tony was frowning about.

“When – when they brought you in,” she said slowly. “They – you were wearing some sort of armor, metal armor, do you remember that?”

Tony frowned.  The escape plan had worked.  He had established that.  Which meant that his flying suit of armor had worked.  He tried to remember –

_A shattered window – shouting, explosions – “What did you” – Yinsen jumping – “Go, go, go!” – flying – his head screaming – suit needed better security to prevent air pressure from hurting his head – the gleaming Mediterranean ahead –_

“Tony?”

Tony blinked.  He was in Alexandria.  In a hospital in Alexandria.  It was over.  He focused on Pepper, and nodded.

Pepper’s lips trembled.  “When they fished you out, you had the barest framework and some scraps of metal left, and Doctor Yinsen was magnetized to the bits of metal left on your back.”

Tony lifted his head, suddenly alarmed.  _What about Yinsen,_ he tried to say, but his words caught around something in his throat.  There was something in his throat.  He was – he was –

 _Hitting the water full force and bending himself so that Yinsen wouldn’t feel the impact and water was flooding into the suit into his mouth and a sharp terrible pain in his chest and chin and eyes and forehead and blood filling his vision and water wherever the blood wasn’t and he couldn’t breathe but he had to save Yinsen had to keep Yinsen alive had to get to Alexandria_ –

_BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP –_

“Tony?  Tony!  TONY!”  Pepper was waving her hands in front of his face.  “Tony!  It’s just a tube to keep oxygen flowing!  Tony!”

Tony focused on Pepper; her fire-colored hair, her worried-sharp voice, her too-pale face.   He nodded once, slowly, to tell her that he could hear her.

Pepper’s eyes were teary-silver-blue, but her voice remained steady.  “Doctor Yinsen is in a different hospital, he was fine but for two snapped wrists, some bruising, and dehydration.  But you – Tony, you _died_ , while they were operating, you _died_ , because there was metal in your chin and your throat was cut from it and there was – _oh gods Tony!_ ”

Tony lifted a hand to awkwardly pat Pepper’s hand, only to discover that his hands were both encased in thick white wrapping.

Also, something was humming.

Pepper rubbed a few tears out of her face, and sniffed loudly.  “The report is on my computer, if you want to read it.” 

She held out her computer scroll.

Tony focused on the holo-page. 

_...eighteen centimeters of metal through forehead, four centimeters of metals through the chin, 6138.7312 grams of metal through the sternum and coastal cartilage, 53% of which splintered and entered the heart, spleen, and liver.  34% of the 3253.527536 grams of metal in the heart, spleen, and liver in the nearby blood vessels and arteries –_

Tony tore his gaze away from the page, and squeezed his eyes shut.  After a moment, he waved his hand in Pepper’s direction.

“Do you want me to just…” Pepper hesitated.  “I’ll just roll it down to the current assessment, okay?”

Tony nodded, his eyes still closed.  What _was_ that humming?

“It’s at the bottom, now, Tony.”

Tony opened his eyes.

… _heart pacer and an electromagnet to prevent remaining shards from entering the heart.  Scarring on the lungs and liver, but no further damage.  Hands and hips still healing, require bed-rest._

There was no mention of the _metal that went through his gods-damned head_.  Suddenly terrified, Tony tapped his forehead with one clumsy bandage-wrapped hand.

Pepper dropped her computer on the bed.  “It’s alright,” she gasped.  “Oh, Tony, that was the miracle about it – you have no brain damage!”

Tony raised an eyebrow.  How could they know that?

Pepper returned to stroking his hair.  “They had a touch-healer in with you.  Actually, she had to be sedated when she couldn’t remove the remaining shrapnel from your chest.”

Tony winced, and mimed handing something large to an imaginary person.

Pepper shook her head.  “Only you, Tony.  I’ll make sure that we get her something, though, you’re right.  She deserves it.”

Tony nodded, but his focus was back on that irritating humming noise.  It was driving crazier than he already was, and he was itching to get _out_ of this place.  He jerked his chin to the door.

Pepper blinked.  “The door?  You want – you want to leave?  Tony, you’re still _healing_ , you can’t –”

Tony stabbed his bandage-covered left hand at the computer.  _‘Hands and hips still healing, require bed-rest_.’

Pepper sighed.  “Well, you could rest at home, true, but what about the electromagnet?”

Tony rolled his eyes and mimed moving something large from one side of the room to the other.

“We can…just bring the machines with us?” Pepper deduced, smiling faintly when Tony nodded vigorously.  “I’ll ask, Tony.  That’s the best I can do.”

Later that day (Evening?  Morning?  Tony couldn’t wait to be _home_ ), Pepper brought in a slim young woman with yellow-gold hair and dark blue eyes.

“This is Doctor Diana Alcott, Tony,” Pepper stated briskly.  “I got permission to bring you home if you let her heal your hips and hands.”

“I-I-I-I’ll als-so remov-v-v-ve th-the t-tube fr-fro-fr-from y-your th-thr-th-throat,” Doctor Alcott stammered softly.  She rested her hands on Tony’s wrapped arms, and took a slow breath.

Tony clenched his eyes shut as his skin burned much like it might after too long in the sun.  As soon as Doctor Alcott moved her hands to his immobilized waist, Pepper began to remove the bandages on his arms.  It was a welcome distraction, because whatever it was that Doctor Alcott was doing to heal his hips, it _hurt_.

Finally, Tony was free of the tube and machinery and braces and bandages.  Before leaving, Doctor Alcott fluttered one of her hands over the black box in Tony’s chest.

“I…I’m s-so s-sor-r-ry,” Doctor Alcott mumbled.  “I-I-I c-couldn-n-n-n’t _do_ a-a-a-an-an-anyth-thing.”

Tony pushed himself from the bed.  “Are you _kidding_?” he rasped.  “You did _loads_.  After all that, I – _ack!_ ” he coughed.  “I can _walk_ ,” he finished.

Doctor Alcott smiled faintly, and left the room so quickly, one might say that she fled.  Tony took a step, and then scowled as Pepper pushed a rolling chair out from a corner of the room.

“I can _walk_ , Pepper,” Tony glowered.  “I don’t need a _chair_.”

Pepper lifted her chin.  “You’ll take the chair or you’ll stay until the Medical Board says that you can walk out.”

Tony took the chair.

The moment that the elevator deposited them in Tony’s apartment, Tony wheeled himself into the workshop.

“Jarvis, pull up file 1524alpha18 subset nine,” Tony called.

Pepper stood back as holograms flickered to life.  “You’re not supposed to go directly back to work, Tony,” she said slowly.  “I know it’s impossible to stop you, but try to take it easy?”

Tony nodded, grabbing a blowtorch and heading over to a mass of shining silvery framework.  “Yeah, yeah.  Jarvis, could you do an anonymous order to my mailbox in the Crimson District?”

“Of course, sir.  May I be the first of your family outside of Doctor Potts to say how wonderful it is to see you home?”

Tony smiled, grabbing one of his safety helmets.  “Thanks, Jarvis.  I missed you too.  Do we still have that store of rhodium?”

“We still have forty-seven grams, sir.  Should I put in an order?”

Pepper headed over to the storage which held Tony’s rhodium, and began emptying it into a dish.

“Put in an order for four hundred grams of rhodium, four hundred fifty grams of palladium, five hundred grams of adamantium, and three hundred grams of vibranium,” Tony listed.  “I’m sure that the palladium will work, and the rhodium is a decent enough substitute, but I should be able to make it last seven to thirteen times as long with vibranium instead.”

Pepper heaved over the bin of metal as Jarvis placed the order.  “What are you building, Tony?”

Tony started working on his pile of metal.  “Remember the arc reactors that I was working on?  The ones that should replace all nuclear energy and possibly also the current energy grids that Alexandria is using?”

“Yeah.”  Pepper had to shout as Tony’s machines began to roar.

“Well,” Tony switched off one piece of machinery, and clicked on another.  “I came up with a way to miniaturize it so it would be about the same size as the battery in my chest.  If I switch it out with the battery, I won’t be chained to charging stations for the rest of my life.”

While Pepper contemplated that (and the fact that Tony could just nonchalantly state that he had revolutionized science _again_ ), Jarvis spoke up.

“Sir, the rhodium and palladium will arrive tomorrow at fourteen hours past midnight.  The adamantium will arrive in five days, and the vibranium will arrive sometime within the month.”

“Thanks, Jarvis,” Tony said absently, grabbing his blowtorch.

Pepper decided to go start dinner.  If she didn’t, it was highly unlikely that Tony would eat anything.

She paused halfway out of the room.  “Jarvis, when Tony thinks of it, tell him that I got Doctor Yinsen a room on the 19th floor of Level Four.”

“I shall, Doctor Potts.”

She headed into the kitchen to make dinner.

For once, their deal about eating and sleeping was ignored, though.  Tony was too focused on his work to notice anything.

Thirteen hours after Tony began working, Pepper woke up on a worktable to the surprising absence of sound.

 She sat up, absently pushing her hair out of her face. 

Tony was sprawled on his worktable, dirt and grime smeared all over his arms and face.  In the center of his chest, where the battery-electromagnet box had been, was a glowing white-blue circle.

Pepper lifted Tony out of his chair and laid him on her bed.  He didn’t wake.  Curling up around him, Pepper sank into the bed with something akin to relief.

Tony was home.

Doctor Yinsen joined them the next day, and every day afterwards, at noon.  He spent the earlier part of his day interacting with the rest of Alexandria, and the afternoon helping Tony with machinery and arc reactors and science of a type that Pepper only peripherally understood, while Tony worked and worked and periodically complained about a humming noise that nobody else could hear.

Three days after Tony got home, the apartment codes were changed so that entry was forbidden to any and all human beings, animals, plants, and robots, except for Doctor Yinsen and Pepper.

On the fourth day, Pepper was cleaning up her corner of Tony’s workshop when the doors opened and allowed into the room two people.  Neither of whom were Yinsen.

Pepper slipped on a gauntlet that Tony had made as she turned.  If they were here to harm, the repulsor at her palm would make short work of them.

The intruders were polar opposites – a tall bald man with dark skin and an eyepatch, and a short busty brunette with a stubborn chin and milky-white skin.  They wore identical dark blue jumpsuits, which instantly revealed why they were there.

“BINYAN.”  Pepper lowered the gauntlet.  “Doctor Antonius is unavailable right now, as you would know if you had followed proper channels for scheduling an appointment.  Please leave before you are accidentally injured.”  She bared her teeth.  “The last people who circumvented proper hiring or consulting procedures with Doctor Antonius were blown up.  I think you might remember?  The huge explosion near Sezares?”

“I’m afraid we have to talk to Doctor Antony Antonius Stark, Doctor Potts,” the woman said, her voice heavy with an accent that made Pepper’s heart hurt.  The agent was from Narbonne, and _recently_.  “Please don’t make us use force.”

There was loud clattering noise, and Tony floated into view, seated calmly on his new hoverchair (built directly after the arc reactor and before he blew up the wheeled chair).  He had a blowtorch in one hand, and his safety mask pushed on top of his head. 

“What,” Tony growled. “Do you want?”

Pepper swallowed a grin as both agents looked the slightest bit surprised.  Tony’s voice was still terribly raspy and low, even without the fact that it had apparently broken while Tony was still imprisoned.  That, combined with the image of a scrawny boy in an oversized robe and leather apron, was enough to make most people startle.

Neither of the agents opened their mouths.  Tony scowled.

“Agent Nicholas ibn Yakov Fury, born in Carthage, second in command at BINYAN, aren’t you a bit important to be running milk runs like this?  And Miria of Narbonne, daughter of no one, don’t you have HYDRA agents to mystify?  Franx soldiers to befuddle?”

Miria gritted her teeth.  “We are here to talk about the suit of armor that you built.  BINYAN requires all of the information and material you can supply us, as well as a suit for our agents.”

Tony turned his back.  “I’m going to tell you what I told HYDRA.  No.”

Pepper replaced her gauntlet on her hand.  “Please leave, agents.  Contact me properly, and we might talk.”

Agent Fury loomed in a way that would be intimidating if Pepper hadn’t killed HYDRA agents with hairpins.  “We _require_ the suit the Doctor Antonius built, as well as an improved suit for our agents.  Doctor Potts, move aside.  Doctor Antonius, you _will_ build it for us.  The safety of the world is at stake.”

Tony clutched at the armrest of his hoverchair, blinking away _water flooding into the suit into his mouth and a sharp terrible pain in his chest and chin and eyes and forehead and blood filling his vision and water wherever the blood wasn’t and he couldn’t breathe he couldn’t breathe he couldn’t **breathe**_ –

“No.”  Pepper stood between Tony and the agents.  “ _Get out_.  Do you need it in a different language?  Apage!  Fygo! Ulos!  Deteike!  Hud jao!  Ewchallan!  Ut!  Raus!  Bel khuruj!  Dayabkanuk!  _Take your air and your dirt and your selves and get out!_ ”

“Now, _Miss_ Potts,” Fury began, but Tony wheeled away, turned on the blowtorch, and roared, “STOP!”

The agents turned to look at him.  Tony flipped down his safety-mask and began to work on something.

“Doctor Antonius,” Miria said, sounding a bit timid, “You have to listen –”

“No, _you_ listen,” Tony said, waving his blowtorch.  “It’s gone!  Smashed!  Destroyed!  Do you _know_ how much impact there was when I hit the water?  I was a little preoccupied with keeping Doctor Yinsen alive to worry about the idea that, _oh, BINYAN might want to take a look at this thing when I’m done escaping_.  So if you _want_ to trawl the Mediterranean for scrap metal, _be my fucking guest_.  But please stop interrogating me like I’m your newest enemy, rather than a twelve year old who wants to be left alone!”

“Agents,” Virginia interrupted pleasantly.  “Might I remind you that you invaded this apartment without permission, and thus shall have no access to legal action should security measures harm you in any fashion?”  She raised the palm of her gauntlet, and began to activate the power.

The agents left.

Pepper sagged against the wall, powering down the gauntlet and dropping it on the floor.  “Tony,” she breathed slowly. “Are you alright?”

Tony stopped using the blowtorch to look up at her – well, she presumed he was looking at her, it wasn’t like she could see his eyes through the safety-mask.

“Yeah.”

They left it at that.

But Tony had screaming nightmares for weeks afterwards.

-

Doctor Phillipos, Director of BINYAN, did not have _time_ for this. Between the agents working sabotage in the war and the general intelligence efforts and the _specific_ headache of trying to discern what exactly Yasuf Yinsen had been doing to get himself captured by HYDRA, BINYAN simply could _not_ spare much effort at the moment.

“What?” he asked again, tiredly. The way this job was turning out, he’d take early retirement as soon as the peace treaties were signed. Surely, no one could blame him. “Fury told me he’d said he wouldn’t make another suit.”

The elder of the two agents reporting straightened up slightly and frowned a little. Doctor Phillipos wasn’t sure why, exactly, except that the agent about to speak was one of their better ones, and there’d been rumors he didn’t approve of BINYAN taking in his new partner so young. He was thirteen, and just barely of legal age to join.

“Sir, our report was very clear,” he said. “A larger, improved version of Doctor Antony Antonius Stark’s Iron Man suit was spotted today in the airspace over Alexandria’s Level Five, and at lower altitudes over the Nahal Valley ranging as far west as Tamiat and as far south as Temienhur. Based on the assumed flight path of the original armor, estimates for this new version place Tehran, Taranto, Carthage, Byzantium, and the Nahal headwaters in the Muslim Empire within its range, starting from Alexandria.”

“Larger?”

“Adult-sized, sir. We believe that Doctor Antonius Stark constructed it for either Virginia Potts or Yasuf Yinsen; potentially both. And as I recall, sir, Fury said Doctor Antonius Stark was merely not going to make a suit for _our_ purposes; not that he wouldn’t make some for his personal use.”

“So there’s still no chance he’ll consent to making us one or two to use against the Byzantine navy or to relieve the siege on Kesurga?”

“Absolutely none, sir,” the man told him. “I don’t believe it will ever be used as a weapon- probably, he was testing it as an emergency escape device for Potts or Yinsen. He _does_ have an unfortunate tendency to get kidnapped, sir, and it would make sense for HYRDRA to come after either of them. They’ve already taken Yinsen once, and Potts would be the logical next target if they were going to manipulate Doctor Antonius Stark.”

Doctor Phillipos sighed. All he wanted was just _one_ of the suits…

“Very well, agent- keep an eye on it,” he ordered.

The man’s junior partner, silent until now, snorted as he stood.

“That’s _my_ job, sir.”


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of warnings this chapter: medical malpractice, two instances of attempted assassination, PTSD flashback, and assisted suicide.

There were many reasons why Pepper enjoyed playing ‘secretary’ for Tony.  Some of these reasons included being able to piss important people off without penalties, attending parties that invited Tony, and access to Level Five.

Sorting through Tony’s mail was not one of those reasons.

That wasn’t to say that Pepper had to look through all of Tony’s mail.  Jarvis sorted through the initial load each morning, and trashed the junk mail and sycophants sucking up to the genius.  Pepper just did the manual reading of invitations that Jarvis hadn’t trashed, as well as correspondence.

 It was for that reason that a good portion of Alexandria was under the mistaken impression that Tony was much more polite by mail than he was in person.  Pepper highly doubted that any of the current residents of Alexandria had ever read a letter actually written by Tony.

It was for that reason that, while Doctor Yinsen and Tony cooed over so new improvement to one of Tony’s constructions, Pepper was sitting at the opposite end of the workshop going through Tony’s mail.

She casually trashed four invitations, and stopped with her finger over a fifth.  “Tony?”

“Busy,” Tony said curtly, immediately returning to his techno-babble.  Pepper sighed, and raised her voice.

“Are you planning on attending the –”

“No.”  Tony sounded somewhere between irritated and frightened.  “I’m not attending anything.  Trash them all.”

Pepper sighed, and trashed the remaining fourteen invitations.  She scanned the remainder of Tony’s inbox.

_1: Addressed to TS13111743, From the International Postal Service.  Subject: Box 233-iod._

_2: Addressed to Doctor Antony Antonius Stark, From Doctor Ovadyah Stane, Doctor of Politics and Political History.  Subject: The Grand Council_

_3: Addressed to Antony Antonius Stark, From the Alexandria Central City Hospital.  Subject: Psychiatric Evaluations_

_4: Addressed to Antony Antonius Stark, From BINYAN.  Subject: The Iron Man Suit_

Without much thought, Pepper flicked open the letter from BINYAN, scanned it, and trashed it.  It took a great deal of self-restraint to keep from sending them a serious computer virus instead of simply ignoring the letter.  Heaving an irritated sigh, she opened the message from the International Postal Service.

“Tony,” she shouted over the screech of something metal, “Your vibranium finally arrived.  Do you want me to pick it up for you?”

Tony stopped his work for a moment, holding up a hand to something that Doctor Yinsen was saying.  “What?  No!  No, no, I’ll hire a carrier to bring it to the Tower, Pepper.”

Pepper shrugged.  “Suit yourself.”  She moved on to the message from the hospital, and rolled her eyes.  As if she would be able to convince Tony to go in for psychiatric evaluations.  Sliding the letter aside for future thought (maybe _she_ would go get some psychiatric help), she opened the remaining letter.

_Addressed to Doctor Antony Antonius Stark, Doctor of Nuclear Physics, Geometry, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Programming, Computer Sciences, Engineering, Aerodynamics, Theoretical Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, Statistics, World History, Roman History, Finnish History, Judean History, Ancient Latin, Ancient Greek, Ancient Judean, Old Aramaic, Antonian Alexandrian Aramaic, Judean Aramaic, Japanese, Finnish, Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Norse, and Ancient Japanese, From Doctor Ovadyah Stane, Doctor of Politics and Political History, Greetings._

Rolling her eyes at Stane’s overly pompous greeting, Pepper briefly scanned the note.

_…meet to discuss…your disagreements with the Grand Council….head about your requests and would like to assist you in…removing yourself from the Council…_

Much as Pepper disliked the man, he was only offering to do what Tony had been attempting ever since she had met him – help Tony get out of the Mayoral Elections and the Grand Council.

She opened up a new document.  It wasn’t like Stane would be gaining much outside of Tony’s gratitude.  She might as well offer him an appointment.

_Addressed to Doctor Ovadyah Stane, Doctor of Politics and Political History, From Doctor Antony Antonius Stark, Doctor of Nuclear Physics, Geometry, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Programming, Computer Sciences, Engineering, Aerodynamics, Theoretical Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, Statistics, World History, Roman History, Finnish History, Judean History, Ancient Latin, Ancient Greek, Ancient Judean, Old Aramaic, Antonian Alexandrian Aramaic, Judean Aramaic, Japanese, Finnish, Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Norse, and Ancient Japanese, Greetings._

_Thank you for your kind offer…_

-

Tony had never thought he’d be happy to have his work interrupted, but this was _more_ than worth it- getting off the Grand Council? Having his name struck permanently from the Mayoral Ballot? Doctor Ovadyah Stane was a treasure to the sanity of Alexandria, and more importantly, to _Tony’s_ sanity.

Ovadyah kept his personal office in his suite in the Tower, on one of the top floors of Level Four. Tony walked into the apartment foyer- repurposed as Ovadyah’s waiting area, he’d apparently taken full advantage of the opportunity when the computers had asked him, upon moving in, if he wanted anything in the apartment changed- mid-morning, just as the Doctor himself was showing a big man with a metal briefcase to the door of his office. They were halfway through a friendly parting handshake when Ovadyah caught sight of him.

“Doctor Stark!” he said, dropping the handshake. “Give me a few moments, please, I need to take care of a few things-”

Before Tony could reply that he was fine waiting a couple minutes, he’d disappeared into his office and closed the door. Tony took one of the chairs.

“Doctor Antony Stark?”

Tony looked up. The man Ovadyah had been talking to _loomed_ from this angle. He felt a spike of anxiety, and told himself that whoever the man was didn’t mean it, he was naturally large and Tony was naturally not as large as _he’d_ like to be, just because someone _looked_ threatening didn’t mean they were and it was true the other way around, too, he was proof of that, nothing was going to happen, nobody was going to do anything to him.

“Yeah?” he forced himself to say.

“Our meeting is fortuitous. I hope I have found you well in health and spirit,” the man said, and Tony was trying not to mentally describe his voice as _‘rumbling’_ but it fit, it really did, it was kind of gravelly and pulled-out and he should focus on the accent, the accent was rather strong but he’d place it-

“I am Master Artisan Antun Vanko, and I have reason to speak with you.”

There were only one people on Earth who used the title ‘Master Artisan’.

“Master Artisan Vanko, I humbly apologize for my previous instance of terseness,” he said in Finnish. “I find myself gravely unprepared in our conversation, for I have no knowledge of you or your family.”

“Oh, do spare me!” Antun mock-begged, raising his hands in a gesture of playful surrender. “We are in Alexandria! Why ruin my expectations for the uncouth manners of the rest of these poor miseducated foreign scientists?”

Tony smirked at the description of Alexandria’s general populace and decided this particular Finn was probably laid-back enough, and self-aware enough, about his people’s infamous standards of decorum to take a playful dig.

“ _‘Poor miseducated foreign scientists’_?” he asked, grinning to signal the joke. “So it’s _true_ what all these Vikings have been telling me, Finns really are overbearing snobs!”

Antun snorted with amusement and mirth, and dropped into the chair next to Tony.

“And here I thought only the Hekassir knew that joke! You are simply full of surprises, Doctor Stark.”

“Tony,” Tony told him. “Antony if you have to. My family’s butler was Hekassir.”

“And like all good professional servitors, he trained in Finland,” Antun deduced. “I must unfortunately confess, though, Antony, that it is matters of business and personal honor that necessitate our conversation, and not the joy of your company.”

“Oh?” Tony asked, not liking the sound of this.

“My work is in medical nanorobotics,” Antun told him, tapping the metal briefcase. “But I am in Alexandria to deal with a robotics project much, much larger than my preferred scale. BINYAN called to Finland for my father, and I could not in good consciousness call myself a filial son if I let him travel through an entire war to come.”

“When I told BINYAN that if they wanted a suit for themselves they’d have to trawl the Mediterranean for my scrap,” Tony said after a moment. “I didn’t think they’d actually _do_ it.”

“I find them to be very determined people,” Antun said. Tony recognized it as Jarvis’s _‘I am being diplomatic’_ tone- that must have been a Finnish skill he learned in butler school, or however that worked.

“Why did they call your father?” Tony asked.

“My father is Sepi Vanko,” Antun said, as if that should be the answer. When Tony looked blankly at him, he got the hint. “He worked a time with _your_ father, before they encountered insurmountable personal differences.”

More diplomacy-

“You mean my dad wanted your dad to work _for_ him and not _with_ him and wouldn’t listen when he told _‘the great Howard **Antonius** Stark!’ _that he was _wrong,_ ” Tony filled in.

Antun inclined his head a fraction in wordless agreement, which for Finnish manners, if Tony took Jarvis as a perfect example of, basically meant that Antun was saying, as politely as possible: _‘you are absolutely right and your father is a fucking **asshole** ’._

“Well I know my dad is working for BINYAN, so why didn’t they get him-”

Antun cleared his throat, gently interrupting.

“The workshop assistants tell me that Doctor Howard Antonius was the one in charge of the trawling efforts- but once all the pieces that could be had been salvaged, he stared at them a few minutes, threw the nearest solid object at a wall, and immediately went off to demand reassignment to Military Engineering Command on the Hekassir front lines. Rumor says he thought reconstructing your suit from what they had was an impossible job.”

“And is it?” Tony asked.

“The whole suit?” Antun shrugged. “ _That_ is likely impossible, except for if it was you doing the reconstructing. But the pieces BINYAN has are very intriguing, and I have learned much from them. But I am a Finnish Artisan, a sworn member of the Artist’s Union, and our god is Seppo Ilmarinen, he who created the universe and all the worlds and realms and peoples within it. The Smith’s example shows us to create, and destroy only when and where we can rebuild something better. I cannot make your suit better, and I would not want to even if I could, and I am loathe to leave even what I do know to BINYAN for later use.”

“You know what you need?” Tony told him. “You need Pepper. She’s my personal assistant, but you should call her Doctor Potts or she’ll get angry at you and destroy your life with bureaucracy or something.  She’s _brilliant_ at all that legal stuff, she can probably get an injunction on BINYAN for some sort of intellectual property thing for this, I’m going to give you her contact information. Tell her I sent you and use all those Finnish manners on her, she’ll _love_ that, and I mean it in the most honest way possible, not like, she’ll actually be annoyed and take great pleasure in tearing you apart verbally or something.”

“She sounds like a wonderful woman,” Antun said as Tony entered the information into the man’s computer. “I shall be very pleased to meet her. I’ll go see her immediately.”

Ovadyah appeared in the doorway of his office just as Antun sent off the message to Pepper.

“Did you and Doctor Vanko have an enlightening conversation?” he asked politely as Tony took the visitor’s chair in his office.

“Medical nanorobotics?” Tony asked.

“There’s a war on, Doctor Stark,” Ovadyah said. “Wine? Water? Juice? I believe we’ll be talking awhile.”

“Juice.”

“Medical nanorobots could do soldiers a world of good,” he continued as he poured juice for Tony. “Not everyone can have touch-healers on call to deal with serious injuries.”

He handed the juice to Tony, who took a drink, thinking for moment about medical nanorobots and field applications. It shouldn’t have been hard but the _humming_ that he hadn’t been able to get rid of since he faceplanted the Mediterranean in a metal suit spiked suddenly and it felt like his skull could rattle apart-

Ovadyah was talking.

“Usually, the only way for someone to get off the Grand Council and become exempt from the Mayoral Ballot is if they died,” he was saying. “In your case, we may be able to forego that option.”

He could focus through the buzzing. He _had_ to be able to, he could ignore his body for hours and hours when he was working in the lab. Ovadyah basically ran the Council, and then, by extension, the City of Alexandria- if anyone would have a way out for Tony, it would be him.

“How?” Tony forced himself to ask. Pepper had been bugging him on and off about the psychiatric appointments- maybe this was some sort of psychosomatic effect from thinking he _should_ have brain damage from what had happened to him. He _was_ the master of his thoughts and he _would_ overcome this- the slight sting of fruit juice on his tongue helped him block things out for a second by focusing on the new sensation, but only just.

“You are in a unique position, Doctor Stark,” Ovadyah told him, leaning forwards over his desk. “Alexandria has never had a Council member so young-”

“You’re going to exempt me on account of age,” Tony said, trying to keep ahead of the conversation. Anything to ignore the _humming_ that was more _buzzing_ now.

“No,” Ovadyah said. “Doctor Stark, if you’d _listen-_ ”

He was _trying-_

“As I was saying- so young, and with such a troubled past. It would be easy, and arouse absolutely no suspicion, to file an injunction against you on the basis of trauma. I could put in the paperwork, you would go to the psychiatric ward in the hospital to get evaluated- and then, as a precaution against any… _unwanted_ results, you would demand to prove your worth by retaking the initial exams. From there, it is simple.”

Ovadyah folded his hands.

“You deliberately fail them. You fall below Level Four, and just as the laws of Alexandria state, you lose your Level Five status, and with it, your responsibilities to the city. You blame your brain damage from your rather _spectacular_ crash into the Mediterranean; and, depending on how the psychiatric evaluations come back, trauma from your kidnappings.”

“Won’t work,” Tony gasped. He couldn’t breathe right why couldn’t he _breathe right-_ “I remember that message, it said _‘exceptions include serious injury’-_ ”

He cut off, wheezing.

“Well, we certainly can’t have someone afflicted with psychiatric problems running Alexandria,” Ovadyah said reasonably. “Just think about everything that could go wrong.”

Tony could, he could think of _that,_ and he thought of the Lesser and Greater Fires of Alexandria when nothing had been regulated and people hadn’t yet fully grasped the dangers of black powder, and he felt like _he_ was on fire- no, he was freezing, he was numb, he was everything at once and he _couldn’t breathe right_ -

“I’m not-” he coughed, and was there really blood or was he imagining it because he wasn’t sure if he was in the water and the fire was the metal in his flesh and the cold was the Mediterranean or-

“ _‘_ _Misrepresentation of degrees, credentials, powers, and experience is a security risk and a public safety hazard’_ ,” Tony quoted, forcing the words out. He could work through this. _He could work through this._ “Law Five. I could be exiled, or executed-”

“If you were exiled or executed, then you wouldn’t be eligible for the Grand Council _or_ the Mayoral Ballot,” Ovadyah pointed out, tone entirely reasonable. It sounded kind, even. “And the caveat for Law Five is: _‘Except for misrepresentation in the case of preserving personal health and safety’_. Surely this counts?”

 _“I don’t have any psychiatric problems!”_ and it wasn’t a shout, or even a wheeze, it was a hoarse whisper.

“Are you _sure?_ ” Ovadyah asked. “Because you certainly don’t look like you should be trusted with any responsibilities at _all_ right now _._ Or are you going to tell me that it’s just the juice disagreeing with you, and _that’s_ the problem?”

_He’d poisoned the water and the pirates had drunk it and he’d gassed them because if **he’d** been a pirate he would have faked the symptoms of poisoning to catch whoever was tampering with their supplies-_

Tony half-fell out of his chair and stumbled, almost making it up to a run, for the elevator. He couldn’t hear the elevator’s instructions over the _buzzing_ that had started as the _humming_ and was a _roaring_ now, everywhere, all around him; but he knew what he had to do even when it took all his strength to deploy the restraints and he was hacking blood into the rebreather.

He couldn’t remember the elevator stopping or getting up or the doors opening but he was falling, towards the familiar floor of his apartment’s entryway, and there were people yelling and it got through the _roaring_ maybe it was Pepper and when he retched all over the floor it was blood tinged with fruit juice and scraps of muscle and globs of mucous and people were not supposed to _literally_ vomit up their stomachs and it _burned,_ in his gut and through his throat and he couldn’t _breathe_ was it reaching his heart please no-  

There was something more than burning and he _screamed,_ he whited out, he could hear and yes, it was Pepper scared and trying not to be and there was Yinsen but he was further away so what-

His heart went _thumthumthumthumthumthumthum_ and the roaring was back to a humming but it had a high whining edge to it and he could _hear_ and what he could hear was his breath hissing between his teeth as his heart did exactly what the pacemaker and the electromagnet were supposed to keep it from doing.

_“His **heart** his **heart** you’re **supposed** to be a medical technician you can’t **just-** ”_

That was Pepper’s voice and the only medical technician they had was Yinsen but he’d heard Yinsen further away and his _heart_ it _hurt_ but the metal couldn’t have, not yet, right, but he was worrying and worrying boosted the heart rate but he could hear but he couldn’t _see_ yet and he didn’t know what-

There was a pressure on his chest and Tony’s scream was strangled, but _something_ changed, the whining edge on the humming went away and the feeling inside his chest changed and no, he can’t have felt the change in the energies of the arc reactor, could he have?

But he could breathe, and he wasn’t on fire, and his vision was clearing-

“I am a nanoroboticist, Doctor Potts,” Antun Vanko said, lifting his hand from the arc reactor before Tony could panic about anybody touching him. “Not a medical technician. I assure you, there is a _world_ of difference.”

“How-” Tony gasped, and his voice was raspy. “What-”

“I electrocuted you to save your life,” Antun told him, and played electricity between his fingers for a moment as demonstration. He was a Finn, of _course-_ “And then manipulated the energies in your wondrous electromagnetic reactor to save it again. Even with that, though, I- I hesitate to say what I must, here, for I fear to be the bearer of damning news.”

“I just watched Tony nearly _die_ ,” Pepper told him, dropping to her knees on the floor, ignoring the vomit there, and clutching Tony to her chest. Presumably, she was glaring at him, but Tony wasn’t going to move to look. It was dark and warm in her embrace, and comforting, and she smelled like the workshop and the kitchen. He closed his eyes, and listened to her heart beat, savoring the feeling of breathing without impediment. “You _will_ tell us-”

 “It is very useful, controlling electricity when your work is with machinery on the scale of molecules. It is _much_ easier to be precise when you can feel exactly what they are doing, every second. And Antony, the moment you fell out of that elevator, I felt my nanorobots in _you._ ”

Pepper made an incredibly angry, wordless noise; and there was another body next to them suddenly and Yinsen had an arm around him and was whispering: _“Tony, **Tony-** ”_

“I would never, _ever_ do with my robots what has been done to Antony,” Antun swore to Pepper. “The only supplies of them there are exist in my workshops- my one at home, in Finland, and mine here in the city, heavily protected and undeclared in the BINYAN compound on Pharos Ktana. Except for, as of about half an hour ago, the vial I gave to Doctor Ovadyah Stane, who had graciously offered to present my work to Doctor Inari Kivikaivo.”

 _“Stane,”_ Pepper snarled.

“Forgive me if this is presumptuous,” Antun said carefully. “But- Antony, just what _is_ your mutant power?”

“96% of Delta-level mutations,” he mumbled in response, shock starting to set in. Ovadyah- Ovadyah had tried to _kill him._ After trying to convince him to lie on his tests to get off the Council and the Ballot.

“I sincerely doubt you have a Delta-level mutation, _or_ that it is ‘a slight glow’,” Antun said. “The nanorobots had merely base coding- programming to tell them to process biological material, without any markers to define _what_ to process. They were eating through your systems at a rate that should have had you dead seven minutes ago. You were healing yourself astonishingly fast. And this, coupled with the brain damage I know you did _not_ sustain from crashing into the Mediterranean, leads me to believe that the physical hardships of your escape triggered a secondary set of mutations.”

“How do you know about the Mediterranean?” Tony heard Yinsen ask suspiciously.

Antun sighed.

“BINYAN. They have much to answer for, Doctor Yinsen.”

“I am _very_ aware,” Yinsen replied dryly. “Tony, I think it’s time to get to the hospital. They clearly didn’t do all the tests they should have.”

-

Staring at the too-white ceiling and attached to four different machines, Tony decided that he spent _way_ too much time inside of the Alexandrian City Hospital.

“No!  _Not_ the International – I want to speak to the Alexandrian City Police!  Gods – and my name is _Doctor_ Virginia Potts, not _Miss_ , not _Madam_ , and not _Mistress_!”

Tony glanced over to where Pepper was simultaneously filling out some paperwork and reaming out someone over her earpiece.  He had the slightest feeling that she wasn’t too enthused about being in the hospital, either.

“Excuse me, Master Artisan Vanko.”

Stepping around the glowering Finn that Pepper had (apparently) decided was Tony’s new bodyguard, a petite brunette with bright brown eyes entered the room.  She flashed a weak smile at him.  “Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but Doctor Yinsen said that there was a mutation emergency in here?”

Tony had the feeling that, if it weren’t such a serious situation, Antun would have made his “miseducated scientists” joke again.

“I think that’s me.”

The brunette looked at him, and one eyebrow lifted.  “Doctor Antony Antonius Stark!  Or do you have a name you prefer?  The Nameless God knows, my fiancée _hates_ being called Doctor Robert Brutus Banner –”

Tony blinked at the woman.  “Call me Tony,” he said after a moment.  “You are?”

The brunette flushed bright red.  “Oh and there I go, being rude again!  I’m Doctor Alspeth Ros, but you can call me Alspeth if you want.”

 Tony looked at her.  “Um.  You didn’t bring any equipment.”

Alspeth moved forward to touch one of the machines which were already attached to Tony.  “I didn’t need to,” she said, squinting at the screen.  “Tell me, what has made you think that something has changed between your physical check when you entered Alexandria, and now?”

Tony flicked a glance at Antun.  “Um.  I survived something that should have killed me.  At least, Doctor Vanko said that I did.”

Alspeth’s eyes sharpened.  “ _Really_?  Beyond that, what have _you_ noticed _?”_

“The humming,” Tony blurted, edging backward as Alspeth drew closer.  “There’s this humming noise, and it’s really…”  He drifted off.  The hum had actually subsided, but there was – something…

  _SOme_ Thi _N_ g –

_SOMETHING-----_

S

O

M

E

T

H

I

N

G

.

.

.

_Blue light filled the universe everything was bound together with silvery-blue streams of light and the numbers sang within them, numbers that sang and rang and he fell_

_F_

_E_

_L_

_L_

_010101010101010101011110000110101001101001010101010010000111001010100100001010101111101010101010101010100011010111111111111110101010011011001010101111100101010011010010000101010010000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000_

_010101000 01101111 01101110 01111001 00100001_

**_010101000 01101111 01101110 01111001 00100001_ **

**010101000 01101111 01101110 01111001 00100001**

010101000 01101111 01101110 y!

010101000 01101111 n y!

010101000 o n y!

T o n y!

Tony!

“ _Tony_!”

Tony blinked, and the universe of silver and blue thread faded, revealing Antun, Yinsen, and Alspeth leaning worriedly over him.  In a corner of the room, Pepper was still on her earpiece, ranting.

“No, I do _not_ want BINYAN – Agent Métallus if you don’t transfer me this _instant_ –!”

Tony focused on Alspeth.  “ _What_?”  He was rather irritated.  The blue-and-silver-thread-universe was really nice, and he could have just floated there forever.  Even now, he could feel it, just outside of his grasp…

He focused on Alspeth, who was wearing a rueful smile.  “Well, I know what the problem is.”

Everyone turned to look at her.  Alspeth looked startled for a moment, and then shrugged.  “The easiest name for it is technopath – the ability to mentally control and command tech.  But…”  She trailed off, looking thoughtful.

“But?” Yinsen prodded, carefully helping move Alspeth away from Tony (Tony breathed a sigh of relief at the growth of his personal space).

“But,” Alspeth repeated, “I’m not sure that’s really accurate.  If I had to give it a proper name, I’d call you an _electrotechno_ path.  You see, control, and manipulate electricity as well as technology.  Not like electric shocks or something, but…”  She threw her hands in the air.  “I’m not really sure how to explain it!”

“It is not like my abilities,” Antun said slowly, holding out a handful of miniature lightning.

Alspeth shook her head, and began saying something technical about mutation in Finnish.  Tony ignored the conversation, and _focused_ again, this time not quite letting go of reality as he _looked_ –

_Reached –_

_Touched –_

The machines suddenly went wild, and everyone (except Pepper, who was still shouting at someone,) turned to stare.

Tony blinked.

Sitting on the bed beside him, humming merrily, was a pile of scrap and a tiny model boat that –

Had a motor and seemed to _run_.

“ _Cool_ ,” Tony breathed, tracing the line of the boat with a gentle finger.  “That was _easy_.  I could do something much more difficult, if I tried harder.”

“Exactly!” Alspeth crowed, still in Finnish.  “You could manipulate the universe on a molecular level, if you wanted to.  All you would need to do is –”

“No,” Tony said slowly.  “You don’t need to explain it.  I can – I can _see_ it.”  He shook his head.  It would take some practice to _stop_ seeing it, actually.  It was as if, now that he knew what it was and how it worked, he couldn’t quite see how to _stop_ –

“ _Excuse me?_ ”

Everyone turned to stare at Pepper, whose voice had grown cold and furious.  Her eyes were frosty, and her jaw was out in a way that Tony knew meant trouble.

“I’m a _what?_   No, no, let me explain something to you,” Pepper said, cupping one hand over her earpiece.  “I am _Doctor_ Virginia Potts, _Doctor_ of Administration and Physics.  My soul-sister is _Queen_ Alix XXI of Narbonne, _Doctor_ of Musical Theory and Narbonni History.  The person for whom I work is _Doctor_ Antony _Antonius_ Stark, _Doctor_ of Nuclear Physics, Geometry, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Programming, Computer Sciences, Engineering, Aerodynamics, Theoretical Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, Statistics, World History, Roman History, Finnish History, Judean History, Ancient Latin, Ancient Greek, Ancient Judean, Old Aramaic, Antonian Alexandrian Aramaic, Judean Aramaic, Japanese, Finnish, Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Norse, and _Ancient Japanese_.  Need I quote at you?  Because I can remind you, right now, that ‘not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired.’  Plautus.  That you should judge Doctor Antonius by his age rather than his abilities – _excuse me_?”

Pepper paused for a moment, and her face darkened.  “Well, then, I can only hope that your reproductive organs decay and are eaten by dung beetles, and that afterwards the remaining crevices should be infested with lice and scorpions, because the thought of a person such as you _procreating_!”  She pressed a button on the earpiece, her face still painted with anger.

“Would you believe,” she hissed. “That they refuse to even record a complaint, because _Doctor_ Stane has registered a complaint stating that Tony was _mentally ill_ , and so they won’t even listen to a word I have to say –” She waved a fist in the air.

“I think,” Alspeth said slowly. “That this is the part where I call my friend, Doctor Bét Angli, and we prove to the world that Tony is _not_ psychologically ill.  Then, I leave, and you can plot without worrying that BINYAN might overhear anything.” She began backing out the room as she spoke, throwing wary glances at Pepper.

“And _who_ is Doctor Bét Angli?” Pepper demanded sharply.

Alspeth stopped in the doorway.  “Doctor Batsheva Bét Angli, Doctor of Prepubescent Psychology, Pubescent Psychology, and Adult Psychology.  She is _also_ a telepath.”

Pepper nodded.  “Call her.”

Alspeth nodded.  “Right.  I’ll – do that.  You stay here, I’ll send her.”  She reached up and touched her own earpiece.  “Call Batsheva – yes, Batshi?  Hi, look, can you come to room 753 in the Central City Hospital on Level Four?  Right – yes, I owe you – okay, I’ll ask Bruce – no, really, it’s – thanks, Batshi.  Bye.”

Alspeth turned to look at them.  “Well?  Everything alright?”

Tony nodded mutely, and Yinsen just smiled at her worried gaze.  Antun continued to stand in that polite way (how did they come up with a way to _stand_ politely, anyway?), but Pepper grabbed her arm.

“Allie?” Pepper said quietly. “Thanks.”

Alspeth shrugged, and looked away.  “It’s no problem, Virginia, really.  I’m glad to have gotten a few days away from BINYAN, they seem to think that a single contract means that they own me.  And, between everyone in this room and me?”

Pepper raised her eyebrows.

Alspeth shrugged again.  “Stane has always bothered me as much as he bothered every other young woman who has managed to get as high as we have.  That fact that he did this – I do believe you, by the way – it’s disgusting!  No offense, Tony, but you’re _twelve_!  Trying to kill a _kid!”_ She shook her head, wisps ofbrown hair flying in her face.  “Disgusting.”

“Don’t worry,” Tony rasped.  Everyone turned to look at him.  Unbeknownst to him, Tony’s normally brown eyes were gleaming electric-blue.  “He won’t get away with it.”

-

“Zola is _not_ pleased, Stane.”

“Well, _I’m_ not pleased with Zola,” Doctor Ovadyah Stane told the Finn who’d invaded his office.

“It doesn’t matter if you are unhappy with the good Doctor,” Master Artisan Aldriki Kilijaan told him curtly. “ _You_ have made many promises you couldn’t make good on.”

“It’s not _my_ fault your assassin didn’t escape with Bét Yisroel _or_ his serum,” Doctor Stane retorted. “And I got you Doctor Antonius Stark- _you’re_ the ones who lost him, and your precious Doctor Yinsen. _I_ was the one who was left out to dry with that. Zola said they’d take a few Councilmembers down on his way out-”

“Doctor Zola offered you _nothing!_ ” Master Artisan Kilijaan snapped.

“You would never have gotten this far without my information!” Stane half-shouted at him. “You said when you came that you had a solution!”

“And I _did,_ didn’t I? I told you to tell BINYAN to get Sepi Vanko, because Antun would be sure to come in the old fool’s place, and you could use him, frame him, whatever you wanted! But Stark is still _alive,_ Stane!”

“You think I don’t know that?” he demanded. “All I ever wanted was a Council seat, Kilijaan! It shouldn’t be this hard!”

“ _Oh,_ the _Grand Council_ of _Alexandria,_ ” Kilijaan sneered. “Do you have any idea how much discontent there is over the Five Laws of Citizenship, Stane? Number Two, in particular, is a kicker- _safety procedures!_ Science needs to breathe _free_ , Stane! Science needs the unfettered fallow fields of the human brain to reach our species’ full potential! Alexandrian _ethics_ have no place in our new world.”

“I didn’t know HYDRA cared so strongly-” Stane started to say.

“Oh, Zola has parted ways with HYDRA,” Kilijaan told him, tone flippant, like breaking with an international terrorist group with vast, unknown resources infamous for never letting go was nothing to worry about. “They were too demanding- it was holding us back.”

_“‘Us’?”_

“Their _scientists_ , Stane,” Kilijaan said, and his voice rose to a mocking, parroting falsetto. “ _‘Oh but Doctor Zola, the plane will never fly! But Doctor Zola, you only have a mere fraction of Bét Yisroel’s work and your sole test subject escaped, we can’t give you any more funds! But Doctor Zola, what do you mean you can’t reverse-engineer Antony Stark’s repulsors! You have his blueprints and weapon he made for Yinsen, just duplicate it!’_ But but but but, all the time, from witless thugs and brainless bureaucrats and radical ideologues who had no thoughts but what Schmidt _told_ them to have. You know, _he_ was the one to come up with the idea to kidnap Stark. The brat schooled him in proper hiring procedures and human resources management, which was _exactly_ what he deserved.”

“Zola’s gone freelance?” Stane asked, and tried to picture it. He couldn’t think of anyone who would touch the man, not after the way he’d made himself integral to HYDRA-

“No, _Doctor_ Zola has gone undercover,” Kilijaan told him. “ _We_ have gone freelance.”

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a business card. Stane took it from his outstretched hand. It was plain cream cardstock, stamped _‘GMS’_ in big, bold gold. Underneath, in tiny, delicate script, the words _‘Granditemas Modus Sententiae’_ had been traced, also in gold.

“ _‘Most Elevated Mode of Thought’_?” Stane asked skeptically. “Well, no one ever _did_ accuse Zola of being humble-”

Aldriki Kilijaan made a little movement and the Master Artisan was _behind_ him, somehow, and Stane was going to stand but Kilijaan clamped a hand down on his shoulder and it _burned_. The man’s grip tightened so much that the bones in Stane’s shoulder creaked. He smelled burning cloth where Kilijaan’s hand was and the fire was _eating_ him, from the inside out-

“You know, we _did_ manage to find Doctor Conochvars. He was in Byzantium. It’s _pathetic,_ how predictable that man is- whenever he’s in trouble, he goes _crawling_ back to the man who thought he could make a _scientist_ out of a crippled Viking from the poorest hovel of a backwater this side of the Atlantic. He talked after Zola cut off his nice new arm.”

Stane’s chair was spun around so they were staring at each other, Kilijaan stooping a little to sneer at him from close proximity.

“Such _fascinating_ applications their work had,” Kilijaan continued. “There’s so much you can do with the mutant gene. Zola didn’t want to get started on some of the more esoteric options right away- he was too busy trying to give Schmidt his super-soldier pipe dream. But I had some time, so-”

He shrugged.

“Next stage of evolution, and all that,” he said, and breathed onto Stane’s face. His breath was as hot as his hand, and smelled like charred meat from this close.

Kilijaan smiled as Stane’s breathing went _grk_ and he seized up.

“There are so _few_ people who don’t have an active mutation, or one so weak as to be insignificant. It would be a shame that they should be removed from the gene pool for the safety of our species body- but happily, most of them are Vikings; so really, it’s more like a public service.”

He took his business card back.

“I know _your_ mutation, Stane- temporary paralysis. It’s wasted on you, you’re a _terrible_ assassin. _That’s_ what you should have used on Stark, I’m honestly surprised and dismayed that I had to tell you to get the Vankos involved. Me? A touch of parahuman strength, a convenient healing factor- but mostly, I have fire. That burning sensation eating you up? That’s my genes fusing to yours. Doctor Conochvars' work was ever-so-helpful here, he had the whole formula for mutation suppression worked out before we even found him. All I had to do, once we got it, was… tweak it a little, so it _overran_ instead.”

Kilijaan looked contemplative.

“You’ll probably die in a few minutes,” he told Stane. “If your new healing factor takes over for the moment and you don’t, well… then I’ll be interested to see what you come up with to kill Antony Stark in the day or so you’ll have before it gives up and you explode. It’s an unexpected side effect, very unpleasant. There’s a reason I reported my research to Zola as an _extremus optio-_ a last resort. Either way, I’ll be staying here. I could use a few day’s rest before I ship out- it’s such a shame, that Sine got into the science and technology game _so_ incredibly late, but that’s their own fault for being such stubborn isolationists _convinced_ of their own superiority. Their wonderful little Hundred Years’ War with Japan has taught them _much_ better, and they’re going to pay GMS quite handsomely for our expertise to make sure it ends in their favor.”

 The burning was fading, increment by increment.

 _“Traitor,”_ Stane rasped, too weak just yet to move and do anything about Kilijaan. _“Liar; violator-”_

“You should have _listened_ when you contacted Zola and I,” Kilijaan chided playfully. He leaned in close again, momentarily, before walking out of the office to claim Ovadyah’s bedroom: _“Noster modus primo modo est,_ Doctor Stane.”

-

 _‘He took the bait,’_ Pepper told them through the comms, ending her call to Ovadyah Stane. _‘He said he’d meet you at the testing facility in ten minutes, Tony, to ‘provide moral support and condolences on behalf of the Council’.’_

“Sleazy,” Tony commented. “Okay-”

He mentally linked everyone’s comms together. This was so much _easier,_ he _loved_ his new powers; if HYDRA and Zola weren’t so incredibly, incredibly evil and deserving of death he’d send a thank-you card or something. “Antun, you ready?”

 _‘I have an urge to inform BINYAN that their security is really quite lacking,’_ he responded. _‘Perhaps after we take care of this, and I can send an anonymous message through a secure location.’_

“I can totally make that happen,” Tony said. “All right, we’re good. Pep, Yinsen- see you on the other side.”

He stepped through the doors of the Library of Alexandria and took the elevator up to the testing facilities on the seventh floor. The entire area was deserted, politely but firmly evacuated on the pretense of emergency system maintenance by Antun, who was unobtrusively lurking in one of the empty testing rooms disguised as a technician.

 Stane appeared not three minutes later.

“You’re early,” Tony remarked; and was about to say more but then Stane ruffled his hair, and he _couldn’t move._

They hadn’t known what he was going to do but Tony had _not_ planned for _this._ How had he-

As soon as he was conscious of asking the question, information from Alexandria’s City Network poured into his mind.

His mutant power. Paralysis.

“All I wanted was a Council seat,” Stane was muttering to himself. “Just a Council seat; just an opportunity to show the world how it’s done, what the City of the Future could _really_ be if it had some competent, _willing_ guidance-”

 _Then you should have waited until somebody died_ , Tony wanted to say, and immediately thought of Doctor Piersi, who he kept expecting to keel over any day now; and then the City Network was in his head again, he’d have to figure out how he was doing that so he wasn’t randomly flooded with information whenever he idly wondered about something.

The top eight ranked people in the city- the people who formed the Grand Council- in the beginning of 1822 were four members of the current Council, and four people Tony had never heard of. Stane was number nine.

Later in 1822, just after the war had started, the top eight people were Howard Antonius Stark, Avraham Bét Yisroel, the four current Council members, and two of the people Tony had never heard of. Stane was number nine.

Tony hadn’t known Howard and Bét Yisroel had been on the Council! They’d never shown up, _that_ was for sure.

The list for 1822 the day before Tony took his first exam in Alexandria was Howard Antonius Stark, Avraham Bét Yisroel, the four current Council members, one of the people Tony had never heard of- and Stane, at number eight.

He’d been a Council member of all of fourteen hours; and never once sat in a meeting while retaining his position.

The day Tony took his exam, the list had changed to Antony Antonius Stark, Howard Antonius Stark, Avraham Bét Yisroel, and the four current Council members. The person Tony had never heard of was number nine. Stane was number ten.

 _‘Tony? Tony!’_ Pepper was saying into his comm.

Doctor Rahman Ibn Asad had arrived a week before Bét Yisroel was killed, and Stane had been, for a little while, number eleven. When Bét Yisroel died he was number ten, when Tony was kidnapped he was number nine again, and then when Tony returned with Yinsen Yinsen had become number ten and Stane was eleven. He’d been eleven for a long while, and then when Howard had left the city for reassignment to Kesurga, he was number ten once more.

Tony was pretty sure the thing he should be most preoccupied about right now _wasn’t_ that Howard had technically been on the Council for five years and a handful of months but had never even bothered to show _up;_ but it was so infuriatingly _typical_ of him-

He could move his fingers.

Was it supposed to wear off that fast? Stane hadn’t moved to do anything yet, so, probably not, but then why-

He had a healing factor now, didn’t he, the lack of brain damage had proved that, so maybe that-

He could move his toes; and _oh_ okay _that_ was an icepick, Stane had an icepick, and that could only be going unpleasant places to get to his brain but all he’d have to do was pull the reactor out and take the icepick with him and erase the footage and then the hospital probably wouldn’t even _order_ an autopsy, they’d just assume the reactor was the problem and the police might investigate but they wouldn’t _find_ anything and-

Antun Vanko stepped out of the empty testing room, electricity crackling to life. Stane spun at the sound and one of the supercharged metal cables lashed him across the face.

It was a beautiful idea Antun had come up with, truly- BINYAN had trawled the Mediterranean but the repulsors they had probably been so desperately hoping for had been recovered only in bits and pieces, irreparably damaged. The biggest section they’d managed to find was Tony’s chestpiece, arc reactor still in place and functioning, and Tony felt he could be rightly proud of that, that it had survived the impact.

Tony had been all for delaying the plan for a day so that, after Antun snuck the pieces they’d recovered from his suit out, he could make new repulsors for the man- but Antun had said simply: “Antony, I am a Master Artisan of the Finnish Artist’s Union and the son of Sepi Vanko, the Head Artisan of the same. Get me some cable, some winches, a welder, and a riveter; and I will be ready in three hours.”

Tony and Yinsen had watched, for the entire three hours, as Antun tore out the pneumatics that had let Tony move the heavy metal suit in the first place, riveted the scavenged plating to a blacksmith’s leather shirt, got the cables run through the winches and winches welded to the plating and the cables attached to the reactor, and finally powered up the glorious piece of emergency engineering that made the arc reactor supercharge the metal cables so Antun could stay out of range of hand-to-hand combat, using nothing but the strength of his body and his power over electricity to move and guide the cables to rain painful, searing defeat wherever he wished- and now, yes, he could see why the Finns called their engineers artisans and grouped them with their poets and their painters because this was a dance, a dance that Antun choreographed as Stane was driven back, back, away from Tony and towards the doors and Tony should probably get out of the way, actually.

That was probably a good idea.

Shaking off the last of the paralysis, he retreated to one of the walls, out of range of Antun’s cables; and apparently he’d missed something important, because Antun was screaming into the comms.

_‘-Kilijaan! Kilijaan you **defiler,** if you-!’ _

Tony’s retreat had put him in the perfect position to watch from as Stane, who he realized should _not_ be taking that much electricity directly to the body and still be standing, reached out one faintly glowing, red-orange hand and grabbed a cable as it started to whip away from him, the metal melting through his fingers.

-

Bringing the lockpicks along had turned out be a good hunch, because not only did Stane have security encryptions it took Jarvis to get through, he’d decided plain old mechanical locks were also necessary- especially for the safe hidden in the false front of his heavy wooden office desk. The thing must have been _torture_ to bring up the Tower, and Pepper felt sorry for whatever work crew had had to move it.

“I have no idea what most of these things even _are,_ ” she said to Yinsen. It was uncomfortable, kneeling on the floor under Stane’s desk, pulling out packet after packet of paper and handing them up to Yinsen, who was looking them over for incriminating evidence.

“Well, _this_ is the full schedule for Mediterranean Rail, and someone’s taken one of the Cartography Institute’s latest maps and drawn the a section of the line on it.”

He squinted at the map.

“I don’t know where this is, though, or why it would be in the safe.”

Yinsen placed the map aside and started riffling through other papers.

“I- hm. These are in Greek, I think. I don’t know what it says, but-”

“We’re fighting Byzantium right now,” Pepper said, shuffling out from under the desk with the last of the papers. “If they’re not academic papers, that seems suspicious.”

She traded the papers she’d just recovered to Yinsen for the Greek, and started looking it over.

“Tony?” she said into her comm. “Tony! Do you have any idea if the Counsel has business in Byzantium? Have they been organizing smuggling scientists out of there like they did in Narbonne?”

There was no response, and she said again: “Tony!”; and then realized she could hear the faint buzz of electricity on the other line. Stane had made his move, and Antun had engaged.

Yinsen had pulled a few more suspicious-looking things out of the papers- a list of locations; a small, thin notebook, each line containing a meticulously-written date, time, and a string of letters, obviously a code for something; and a thin piece of paper, creased from being neatly folded, done up with gold edging and the crisp, flowing lines of printed Vairkhu.

“Finnish, ugh. Antun,” Pepper said loudly, so the comms would definitely pick it up. “If I read off something in Finnish, can you tell me what it means?”

 _‘I can try,’_ he said. _‘If you do it quickly.’_

“Pa…”

Why did Finnish have to have so many _vowels?_

“Pa-a-su-o…” she started sounding out. “Paasuomatrapesaa… Paaom- Paaoman… siirto!”

 _‘It’s a check from the Central Finnish Bank,’_ Antun told her. _‘The second line down should be the person whose account it came from. If you could read that out-?’_

“Al… hmm.”

Pepper looked at it hard for a few moments before saying it all in one go, this time.

“Aldriki Kilijaan.”

_‘Fenrir devour him and Sampsa sow his bones in the fields-!’_

“I’ll be taking that back,” a pleasant voice said from behind her. “Doctor Stane won’t be needing it any longer.”

Antun was screaming her ear in Finnish, and all she could make out was Kilijaan’s name, and this other Finn had a gun; but it was lazily pointed generally towards them, like he wasn’t counting on using it.

He was a Finn, so he probably wasn’t. Finns made up the largest percentage of Alpha- and Beta-level mutations. The gun was definitely just for show, to make a point.

But while he was at least _somewhat_ occupied with holding the gun, it meant he didn’t have a hand free for whatever mutation he could bring to bear.

Pepper put the check down on the table and started to back away from the desk, slowly- but Kilijaan swung the gun around in her direction and fired it. The bullet didn’t come close to hitting her, but the sound was loud and dangerous and there was a puff of plaster where the bullet made a hole in the wall, between her and the door. Pepper couldn’t help flinching, and froze.

If she could get out the door and into the foyer then even if he shot her she could still get into the elevator, and the elevator would take her to Tony’s apartment, and she’d be safe.

The only problem was Yinsen, on the other side of the desk, who couldn’t feasibly run.

“Why, Doctor Yinsen!” Kilijaan exclaimed. It was a horrible, hollow false happiness that he affected. “How good to see you! Doctor Conochvars was asking about you, last I saw him.”

Pepper heard Yinsen inhale, sharply; and Kilijaan wasn’t paying any attention to her any longer, and the door to the foyer was open.

Yinsen was staring straight at Kilijaan, and wouldn’t glance over at her, wouldn’t give her even the barest hint of anything, so if she slipped out _now_ then maybe Kilijaan wouldn’t notice until it was too late, and the elevator had an emergency call system.

“Zola says hello,” Kilijaan told Yinsen. “And goodbye.”

He swung his free hand up and around in an arc and fire burst from it in a stream across the room, and Pepper ducked and ran for the elevator, looking back only once to check for Yinsen.

Yinsen had thrown himself to the ground to avoid the flames, and as he pulled himself across the floor the heavy metal ceiling vent _clang_ ed to the ground, someone swung out of the now-unblocked hole in the ceiling, and Kilijaan sprouted an arrow in his throat.

-

Tony was considering huddling the corner until he figured out how to help, because Antun had yanked what was left of his cable away from Stane’s grasp but Stane was glowing all over now, the dull red-orange, and _he wasn’t supposed to do that._

  _“Pepper,”_ he hissed into his comm. “Pepper, we could _really_ use an assist about now, Stane’s gone- there’s a _thing-_ ”

 _‘We’re having a **situation** up here!’_ she half-yelled back, and Tony flinched a little all the volume, nestled as it was in his ear. _‘There’s some Finnish fire man trying to kill us!’_

“Really? What a coincidence- _Stane is also on fucking **fire!**_ ”

And he was- _breathing_ the stuff at Antun, and the Master Artisan was avoiding it but there was only so much space for them to go, they’d have to run for it soon.

 _‘Tony, I hate to say it, but this does not seem like a coincidence,’_ Pepper told him, much more calmly. The illusion was broken as he heard her mutter: _‘C’mon c’mon c’mon, elevator, **work** -’ _under her breath.

“Get up there and then come down and help, please, _we need you._ ”

 _‘A guy with **arrows** dropped out of the **ceiling** and someone just tried to **kill** me with **fire** \- I don’t think you want me in charge of heavy machinery right now!’ _she told him; and, faintly, Tony was relieved to hear the _ding_ of the elevator arriving on her floor.

“Well what do you think was happening to me when _I_ was doing it?” Tony asked. “Minus the fire but plus evil blue energy. You’ll do fine; Pepper, we _really need this_.”

There was silence for a moment, and then he heard Pepper say into the comms:

_‘Jarvis? Take out the suit inserts. I’m coming up.’_

-

Yinsen had never, ever thought that, when he left Gulmira, he was going to end up in a situation anything like this.

He was almost to the door, and the room was slightly on fire, but Kilijaan had stopped trying to kill him as soon as he’d been shot, reaching up a hand to yank the arrow out of his throat and sprouting another one-two in that hand, and then one in the eye.

He heard the elevator _ding_ behind him; and an unconcerned, very familiar voice say: “Oh, Doctor Potts, are you getting on here? How convenient, I was just getting off.”

There were gunshots, one-two-three-four, right in sequence, and blood bursting from Kilijaan’s torso with each. It seemed to have no real effect except for sending him staggering back towards the outside wall. The man took a deep breath and a fountain of flames erupted from his mouth, headed towards the person hanging from the ceiling. The archer dropped to the ground right next to Yinsen, who momentarily stopped shooting to try and drag him into standing and running out of the room. Yinsen managed to get up by himself, and was half-pushed into the foyer, past the BINYAN agent who’d been in charge of his debriefing after Tony had rescued him from HYDRA.

What was he _doing_ here? How did get here with such perfect timing- was BINYAN _spying_ on them?

Once he’d cleared the office, the archer- he was so small, Yinsen realized with a start, and _young_ \- turned right back around and started shooting.

Kilijaan yelled something that Yinsen didn’t catch.

“Gratuitous Latin?” the archer mock-complained. “ _Really?_ That’s the sort of shit I expect from Yustus Hamarr. Coulsson, am I shooting at Finnish Yustus Hamarr, because that would _make my day_ if I was sir, truly it would.”

“ _Focus,_ Migudakr,” Agent Coulsson ordered. He lowered his gun, now out of bullets, and pulled back from the doorway of the office to reach the fire suppression panel on the wall.

Migudakr pulled another arrow out, nocked it, and fired, advancing a step as he did.

“I _am_ focusing!” he protested, repeating the sequence. “I’m focusing on how much of a pretentious _ass_ Hamarr is! He tried to rename himself ‘Yustus _Malleus_ ’, Coulsson- that is _really fuckin’ pretentious._ ”

“I don’t want to hear about Yustus Hamarr, Migudakr!” Coulsson called to him, and punched the fire suppression panel. Inside the office, thin flame-retardant film started to spray everywhere. “I _want_ to hear that you have Kilijaan in your sights!”

“Don’t sweat it, boss, I’ve shot him like, seven times already. Not my fault he keeps burning them out.”

The flames were down to embers now, and Kilijaan was standing by the outside wall, covered with flame-retardant film and looking utterly _disgusted._

“This is your fair warning, by the way,” Migudakr said, and Yinsen thought that he was speaking to Kilijaan for a moment, since the archer was looking right at him; but his next words proved for Coulsson. “If you ever make me go back to Mississippi I’m putting an arrow in Hamarr’s _face._ ”

Kilijaan moved suddenly, apparently deciding that whatever he was going to do, he’d be faster than Migudakr. He dove for the wall and the young BINYAN agent rocketed forward, another arrow ready and coming for release; but Kilijaan had already reached one of the floor-to-ceiling window panels and when he punched one they shattered completely-

_“Kenta François Migudakr if that was you jumping out **another** window I **will** have you benched-!”_

-and jumped out.

For a moment Yinsen thought Kenta would jump after him, or be sucked out of the Tower by the raging winds because the office was vortex of papers and roaring air currents and he could _just_ hear the mechanics of the emergency seals, damaged by the fire, start to grind and clank into motion, which meant that nothing in that room was _safe_ yet.

And Kenta _did_ go out the window but he _didn’t_ jump; he hooked one leg around one of the muntin bars, which still had _glass shards_ stuck to it, and just threw himself down, out of the Tower, without only that for support. He swung back up and around immediately with the momentum he’d given himself and reached out with the half-gloved hand that had been holding the arrow back mere seconds ago to grab the mutin and roll back into the building just as the emergency seals started to descend, three-inch-thick metal panels that would have slashed any part of him off, easily.

The office was suddenly still and dark and quiet, papers floating down to the floor like shreds of silk.

“Aw, don’t look like that, sir!” he told Agent Coulsson, bouncing back up from the floor with a reckless grin. “I never left contact with the building, so you can’t call it jumping!”

“Kilijaan?” Coulsson asked, expression severe, composed partly of anger and partly of fear. It was close enough to the expression Yinsen remembered his husband having, the day he found Jinan, one of their middle children, doing things in his magic workroom unsupervised, that it hurt a little to see.

Kenta’s face fell into dejection.

“I had a perfectly good headshot and I _missed,_ ” he groused. “I’m pretty sure he got up and walked away, never mind that we’re as high as a canyon wall here-”

“You’re thirteen, Kenta,” Coulsson said, and anger and fear fading to be replaced with fond exasperation. “You’re allowed to make mistakes.”

 _“Thirteen?”_ Yinsen asked, aghast; just as Kenta looked at Coulsson pleadingly and said: “Don’t tell Naomi.”

Coulsson’s mouth quirked upwards momentarily. It almost managed to be a smile.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he reassured the boy.

“It’s just- she’d do that _thing,_ with her face.”

“I’m well aware.”

“BINYAN is _no_ life for a thirteen year old!” Yinsen exclaimed, forcing his way into the conversation. “He’s only a year older than Tony!”

“Hey, I’m a legal adult,” Kenta said. “Thirteen, the age of majority in most parts of the world and religious adulthood for the Jews. That’s where we got the law, you know.”

And thirteen _was_ still the legal age of adulthood on the books in Alexandria, but-

“Nobody actually _uses_ that law anymore! We _know_ better-”

“The Sarmatians still use thirteen,” the boy said reasonably.

“The _Sarmatians_ are barbarian nomadic horsemen who’d kill most outsiders as soon as look at them!”

Kenta shrugged.

“Sounds like my kinda place. Can’t be worse than Mississippi; and let me tell you, we breed ‘em tough there.”

Agent Coulsson picked up one of the fallen papers and brushed the remnants of the fire-retardant film from it.

“What were you and Doctor Potts finding in here, Doctor Yinsen?”

“I don’t- a lot of things!” he exclaimed, throwing up his hands in frustration. “Maps, schedules, papers in languages I couldn’t read! He had a check from Kilijaan, and a little book in some sort of code-”

“This book?” Kenta asked, brandishing it.

“Yes, _that_ book-”

“We’ve had a HYDRA incident, Level Four, Doctor Ovadyah Stane’s apartment,” Agent Coulsson was saying over his comm. “See if you can find anyone who knows anything about a Finn named Aldriki Kilijaan. We’re going to need to bring Doctor Stane in for questioning; and I need someone to get eyes on Doctor Virginia Potts!”

-

Antun had one cable-whip shorter than the other by almost half, and Stane was still breathing fire, but-

_‘Sir, Doctor Potts has successfully integrated with the armor. What should I-’_

“Yinsen-”

_‘Was rescued by two BINYAN agents, Coulsson and Migudakr, and is currently entering the apartment. Shall I pull up the BINYAN agents’ files?’_

“No,” Tony told him. The information was already slotting into place- Filip Coulsson, age thirty-one, born in Ibernís, Alba; Kenta François Migudakr, tentatively age thirteen, a classic Mississippi mongrel of unknown origins- this was _distracting,_ he couldn’t be distracted, not now, not when Stane looked fit to burst into flames any moment and Antun was trying to maneuver and the testing facility was getting _trashed_ and was mostly on fire-

There was _fire_ in the Library of Alexandria.

Pepper needed to get here _quickly_.

“That guy who attacked Pepper and Yinsen-”

_‘Aldriki Kilijaan, sir, preliminary research shows he was stripped of his title of Master Artisan by the Artist’s Union and put on the Equestrian Guards’ watch list, but never formally exiled. I am currently tracking his movements- he’s headed for the train station.’_

“Great, keep an eye on him,” Tony said. The smoke was oppressive and he had no idea where to go, he could vaguely see the dimmed lights of Antun and Stane’s fight but the fire alarms weren’t going off, why- Stane. Stane would have had access to pull something like this. “And Jarvis? Order an evacuation of the building.”

_‘Of course, sir. Doctor Potts incoming.’_

“Thank the gods,” Tony muttered, and coughed, and the clean whining burst of weaponized repulsors cut through the smoke, and one of the exterior walls blew in. Smoke poured out and Tony could see, eyes watering, as Stane was sent flying backwards, away from Antun, and crashed into one of the elevator doors. The heat of his body melted through the metal and he was visible for a moment, trying to grab onto the elevator cables- but they glowed white-orange and ran under his palms. He plunged, downwards, and far below they could hear him punch through the elevator car and the people inside scream, the entire contraption screeching its way down the shaft as Stane’s impact smacked it out of alignment.

-

Pepper dove down the shaft, hands out, grabbing for the elevator cables. She couldn’t stop it, but she could slow it down enough and right it enough for the emergency breaks to catch.

The cable was whipping through the air, and she’d manage to brush her fingers against it for a second until it flew away again, until finally, floors lower, she caught it. She fired the boot repulsors and pulled, up, up, trying to right the car; but Pepper couldn’t tell if she was accomplishing anything. All she could feel was the strain of the armor joints as weight and momentum and gravity worked against her and then there was a _pop, pop,_ as _something_ gave; and for a wrenching moment she thought she was going to drop the elevator.

But then there was the _screech_ of the emergency breaks and a few horrible lurches and the elevator car ground to a stop and Pepper found herself staring up through the armor faceplate to the vanishing point of the elevator shaft, high above; and she could hear the people in the elevator breathing, hard, as they slowly realized they weren’t going to die.

 _‘Pepper?’_ she heard Tony ask, and it sounded like he’d been asking for a while.

“They’re safe,” she told him, hovering uncertainly. Stane was below but he was back above-

_‘Antun and I took one of the other elevators and Pep, you would not **believe** the ground floor, Stane melted through the **concrete,** he’s in the basement.’_

“I think I broke something in the suit, Tony,” Pepper told him, flying back up the shaft to the testing room, and out the original hole she’d made in the outside Library wall. “One of the arms is too heavy-”

She arrived on the ground floor to find Tony crouched on the edge of the hole in the floor, peering downwards. Antun was standing next to him, cables winched back in, looking more like he was standing guard than worrying about Stane.

“The Library’s water tank is down there,” Tony said as she approached. “Three million gallons holding capacity, initial supply from the Mediterranean, ground water, rain water, and recycled water from the city, just waiting to be piped into smaller tanks for the different levels and usages, filtered, purified, and piped up through the Library for usage. The water is kept at a strict one degree centigrade to keep bacteria growth down to a minimum, and the tank itself is ten feet thick. How long do you think it would take Stane to melt through that?”

Pepper flipped the face plate of the armor up.

“You think he’s going to break the tank?”

“No,” Tony said. “You said something was broken? I need you out of the suit, Pep-”

Yinsen cut in over the comms.

_‘BINYAN has arrived in force in Doctor Stane’s office, and they’re putting together a team to come to the Library. Doctor Vanko, now might be a good time for you to vacate the premises. I’m not at all interested in learning what BINYAN does to people who steal from them.’_

“Neither am I, Doctor Yinsen,” Antun said. “But I must ask- Kilijaan?”

 _‘Security footage shows he jumped out of the Tower and landed unsafely upon impact with the bottom of Level Four, but walked away after a few moments,’_ Jarvis told him. _‘I tracked him the Library train station, where he purchased a ticket for Nagchukha, and boarded the train. He left Alexandria ten minutes ago.’_

   “Why would he be going to Tibet?” Pepper asked, stepping out of the suit. Tony jumped in it immediately, despite the lack of inserts to make sure he stayed in place, and she watched as he poked around at the damaged arm with his technopathy, fixing what had come out of place. “Nagchukha is to magic what Alexandria is to science- he’s not a sorcerer, is he?”

“Sine,” Antun said grimly. “Finland and Japan have been inseparable friends since our first royal marriage, and the Japanese are at war with Sine. I cannot imagine that whatever business Kilijaan had here had no negative repercussions for Finland; and since he has ruined his chances here, Sine is the next logical alliance. I cannot let this stand- for the good of my people and all the honor we possess, I must stop him from causing more harm.”

Tony spoke up from his uncomfortable-looking spot in the suit.

“Jarvis-”

 _‘I can purchase a ticket to Nagchukha for you now, Master Artisan Vanko, and have it ready for you when you arrive at the station,’_ he told Antun.

 _‘No, wait, give him a ticket for Tehran, and then have a ticket waiting for him a few days later in Tehran for Nagchuka,’_ Yinsen told him. _‘Master Vanko, if you stop in Tehran and get transport to Gulmira, I can meet you in two or three days with your belongings, and any new information we can get on Kilijaan in that time frame.’_

“That is exceedingly kind of you,” Antun said. “Thank you, Doctor Yinsen. Please order the ticket; I shall be at the station shortly.”

He turned to Tony, who’d just finished whatever repairs needed doing, put his palms flat against his thighs, and gave him a short bow.

“It has been a pleasure working with you, Doctor Antony Stark, and you have been exceptionally accommodating. I thank you for your generosity, and express my regrets for my sudden departure. May Seppo Ilmarinen bless your future work, and Fenrir and Jormungandr protect you.”

Tony hurriedly grasped for the Finnish manners he knew.

“I have been honored by your presence and humbled by your compliments, Master Artisan Antun Vanko,” he replied, feeling somewhat awkward since he wasn’t in a position to bow back. He thought that might have been where the bowing thing had come from, originally, it was _much_ less embarrassing to be sincere when you didn’t have to _look_ at the other person. “May Mielikki guide you on your hunt, and Loki Laivisi and Sikkin Pirkkje bring you safely home.” 

Antun slipped away, snatching a coat discarded by some Alexandrian citizen in the building’s sudden evacuation, and disappeared out into the street.

Tony closed the suit around himself.

“Tony!” Pepper exclaimed. “You’re not secured in that, what are you-”

“I have to get Stane,” Tony said, and his voice sounded so strange coming from the suit- a child’s voice, still, no matter what he’d done or what he’d been through. “He’s been trying to kill me, and I don’t want you near him. BINYAN’s coming, distract them-”

“What, what are you going to-”

“I’m going to drown him in the water tank,” Tony told her, and Pepper froze for a moment.

_“Tony-”_

“There were twelve people on that pirate crew I killed,” Tony said, and his voice wasn’t grim or darkly humorous or even just flat- Pepper could have handled any of those. No, his voice trying too hard to be calm, was wavering on the edges, and she could tell he was trying _so hard_ to make it sound like he was all right. “And who knows how many people were in that HYDRA base I blew up. I’ve killed a lot of other people- adding more isn’t going to make that much of a difference.”

“The second this is over I’m hiring you bodyguards,” Pepper told him, in the same not-calm voice. “As soon as Antun gets done with Kilijaan, I’m paying him your entire fortune to get back here and protect you. I- Yinsen and I, Tony, every time we go out it seems like you- we can’t keep-”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “I know. Keep BINYAN busy. I’ll call you when I’m done.”

-

When Tony would look back on his final confrontation with Stane, many times in the days and years later, it would strike him as immensely tragic.

Ovadyah was just so obviously desperate, and, after the autopsy, when it was revealed just how little time he had left, how much damage whatever had happened to him had done to him, Tony would ask Pepper and Yinsen, quietly, if they thought Ovadyah had _wanted_ to die, by that point. He’d been trying to kill Tony, yes, but it had been for a reason- and that reason was now moot. He had to have known how quickly he was approaching death. There had been no chance he could have ever been on the Council, not with the- virus, eating at system; and the Council seat had been all he lived for. With no real reason left to kill Tony, and no chance at his sole driving ambition, the entire second attempt on his life seemed more like a desperate, elaborate suicide than an actual attempt.

When he was feeling less generous about the man who had, after all, tried to kill him, Tony would wonder in disgust why Stane didn’t just do himself in and save everyone else the hassle.

As it was, Tony had actually found Ovadyah on the water tank, the top hatch melted through, the man himself sitting on the side, his feet already in the water; apparently having had exactly the same thought as Tony himself.

The coldest water in Alexandria was in the water tanks, and was the best bet, in a short-term, quick-and-dirty not-really-a-solution sort of way, to cool him off.

Ovadyah had to have heard Tony coming. The repulsors weren’t exactly quiet, and he was flying slowly, and making a lot of noise, trying to stay balanced in the adult-sized suit without the inserts that would let him fly it comfortably, using his newfound technopathy so the thing would actually fly without him being able to _reach_ the hands or feet and guide the repulsors manually.

Tony had tricked Pepper out of the suit because he’d anticipated having to fight Stane, having to use superior firepower and the strength and protection it gave him to force Stane into the tank and hold him there.

Ovadyah just sat there as Tony landed behind him, and moved, unresisting, when pushed into the tank. Tony only needed one hand to keep his head bent forward slightly, and under the water. He counted off the seconds in his head to keep himself from thinking about the person he was murdering.

One minute and you were alive, conscious, and lucid.

Two minutes and you were alive, conscious, and delusional.

Three minutes and you were alive, unconscious, and brain death began.

Four minutes and you were half-alive.

Five minutes and you were probably dead.

Minutes six and seven were the longest, but Tony counted them out anyway, in the silence of his own head and surrounded by the muffled _slosh_ of the water and low rumble of the pipes, just to be absolutely sure.

-

When Tony returned to his apartment that evening, he was tired, sweaty, and his hands were shaking.

“I,” Tony announced, “Am never leaving this apartment again.  If anyone dares, they can come here, but I am _done_.”

Pepper, wiping sweat from her face, paused to give Tony a weak smile.  “You know,” she said softly, “I think that I can get behind that statement.”

Five weeks later, Tony was sleeping restlessly while Pepper glared at their early-morning intruder.

“Doctor Fury,” Pepper said flatly.  “What are you doing here?”

Fury scowled.  “I’d like to know why thirty-four of my agents have gone missing.”

Pepper lifted a single eyebrow.  “ _Your_ agents?”

Fury huffed out a sigh.  “As of this past evening, thirty-four BINYAN agents have gone missing while in the Tower.”

“You mean,” Pepper cut in, “Thirty-four agents have gone missing while spying on Tony or attempting to accost Tony.”

Fury took a breath, but Pepper raised a hand.  “No.  We were all polite and accommodating last time, even though it was BINYAN that had broken the law by intruding on private space without an appointment.  Now, you will listen.”

“Or?” Fury challenged.

Pepper smiled sweetly.  “Or yet another BINYAN agent will go missing.  Didn’t you notice that, out of thirty-five days, only thirty-four agents have gone missing?”

Fury’s scowl deepened.  “Alright, I’m listening.  Talk.”

Pepper lifted her chin.  “Tony is thirteen years old,” she said slowly.  “He has been through a great deal of trauma in a short period of time, and does _not_ want to build weapons for BINYAN or anyone else.  Badgering him could cause problems, both for Tony and for the entire city of Alexandria.  After all,” her eyes glinted like silver coins.  “Can you imagine how a city run by a computer network would respond to an unstable technopath?”

Fury paled ever-so-slightly.  Pepper continued.

“Your agents are all fine.  We just knocked them unconscious and dropped them on the train to Tingitana.  We didn’t attack the first one for a simple reason.”  Pepper stopped, smiling.  Fury’s scowl darkened.  

“What?” he asked impatiently. 

Pepper huffed a small laugh.  “He rang the doorbell and asked to hang around.  He was polite, brought his own food, and helped out around the workshop until night fell.  Then, he stayed until midnight, and left.  He was unobtrusive, and did not in _any way hurt, alarm, or disturb Tony_.”  Pepper’s smile sweetened.  “ _Is that clear?_ ”

Fury looked at her for a long moment, and sighed.  “You know, I liked you better when you were just Alix XXI’s lover.”

“I would suggest,” a cold voice interrupted, “that you leave.  Now, Fury.”

Pepper’s smile softened, and Fury barely managed to keep from jumping.  Standing behind the BINYAN agent, Tony was holding two small guns – that were actually just disguised repulsors.

“You don’t have to worry about me causing trouble,” Tony continued.  “I have no intention of ever leaving my apartment again.  If you have a contract, appointment, or request, office hours are between eight and ten hours from midnight.  Now leave, before you become the first fatality caused by breaking into my apartments.”

Fury left.

Pepper turned to Tony.  “You intend to accept contracts?”

Tony shrugged, his eyes more tired than a thirteen-year-old’s eyes should be.  “Who else but BINYAN would agree to pay for a flying fortress?  If I don’t agree to play nice, then we’d end up with an all-out war in Alexandria, and there is _already_ a war going on.”

Pepper shook her head.  “I just – you’re _thirteen_ , not twenty.  Why can’t you just get the chance to be a kid?”

Tony just slid to the floor, burying his head in his knees.

After a moment, Pepper knelt beside him, and hugged him.

“If you want to never leave this apartment,” Pepper whispered, “Then I’ll help you.  But what about the Suit?”

Tony smiled faintly, his eyes sliding shut from exhaustion.  “Doctor Antony Antonius Stark isn’t Iron Man, Pepper.  Iron Man might just fly all over the gods-damned world, but Tony is staying right here.  We’ll just have to keep the…secret…”

Pepper stood up, and lifted Tony into her arms.  “What secret?” she asked, carrying him back to bed.

Tony peered at her through slitted eyes.

“I…am…Iron…Man…”


	5. Epilogue: Four Years Later

“Hold that – hold it – just one more minute – there!”  Tony pulled off his super-focus goggles, and beamed.  “That’s twelve, Kenta.  Do you want to try one out?”

Kenta yanked the gloves Tony had lent him from his hands.  “Do I _want_ to?  Tony, you just made me _exploding arrows!_   How is that _not_ the coolest thing ever?”

Tony’s smile widened.  “Right, then, Jarvis, tell Pepper we’re testing sensitive equipment in here?”

Kenta froze.  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait.  We’re testing them in _here?_   Only, I’ve been read you don’t _know_ how many lectures about safety and explosives and Alexandria, and how it all basically amounts to _don’t_ if you’re thinking of combining them.”

The door from the bedroom into the lab opened, and Baka rolled in, dragging something metallic and bulky.  Tony grabbed the thing, and patted Baka on the head.

“This workshop is reinforced all the way to Hades and back,” Tony reminded the BINYAN agent who had somehow become his friend.  “This shield will protect us from any backwash, and Jarvis will record the whole thing, so we can watch it from all angles.”  He frowned.  “But, just in case – Jarvis, bring up the super-shields.”

There was a light humming noise, and the whole room rippled a shimmering blue color.  Kenta stared.  “What…?”

“Kinetic shielding,” Tony said.  “I was inspired by some mutations I read about.  Now only something like an arc reactor or a nuclear explosion would be able to break through these walls.”  He ducked behind the shield.  “Well?  Are you going to try it?”

Kenta grabbed one of the arrows, his eyes lighting up as soon as his fingers made contact with the smooth metal.  In one smooth motion, he drew, nocked, and shot.

The shield bounced in place, and the room _roared_.  Finally, there was silence. 

The boys poked their heads above the shield.

In the direct center of the far wall of Tony’s workshop, a scorch mark smoldered slightly.

“ _Hel, yeah!_ ” Kenta shouted, jumping to his feet.  He threw his arms around Tony.  “That was _awesome!_   How many of these can you make for me?”

Tony stood very still until Kenta moved back a few inches.  “Um… how about we start with an even hundred?”

Kenta let out another delighted hoot, and danced in place.  “You are _awesome_ , Tony!  Now how about those fire-extinguishing ones?  Those’d be great, if you’ve gotten anywhere.”

Tony nodded sharply, seeming to come out of whatever daze he had fallen into.  “I think I’ve got a prototype, but they also need testing – lets clean this up, and then set some fires to put out.”

As they began to shove the shield out of the way, the door to the workroom slid open again.  “Tony?”

Tony pushed a soot-covered hand through his hair.  “Yes, Pepper?”

Pepper held out her computer scroll.  “I can’t make a decision for you, so could you just – look this over quickly so I can get back to work?”

Tony grabbed the scroll, and looked over the message that had Pepper so uncertain.

_Addressed to Doctor Antony Antonius Stark, Doctor of Nuclear Physics, Geometry, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Programming, Computer Sciences, Engineering, Aerodynamics, Theoretical Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, Statistics, World History, Roman History, Finnish History, Judean History, Ancient Latin, Ancient Greek, Ancient Judean, Old Aramaic, Antonian Alexandrian Aramaic, Judean Aramaic, Japanese, Finnish, Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Norse, and Ancient Japanese, From General Theodoros Ros, Greetings._

_In the wake of the rebuilding being done on the Northern Continent, those of us rebuilding are constructing a new city of learning, much like Alexandria.  Of the people in this world who are intelligent and enterprising enough to aid us in this endeavor, your name rose to the top of an extremely short list.  We would be most honored if you would consider traveling to Franx and –_

Tony stopped reading, and handed the computer scroll back to Pepper.  “Tell him to piss off, yeah?”

Pepper frowned.  “Politely?  After all, he is something of a war hero.”

Tony shrugged.  “Whatever.  Say something nice if you like.  I’m not going anywhere, and I’m definitely not going north.”

He tapped the center of his chest nervously, his fingernails making a slight ticking noise.  _And there are some secrets_ , he thought, _that I am never going to allow the world to know_.

Secrets like the reason why the arc reactor in his chest was four times more efficient than the ones powering a good percentage of the world.

Pepper nodded, and left.  Tony remained where he stood, lost in thought, until Kenta tapped him on the shoulder.

Tony jumped.  “What?”

Kenta grinned, his dark blonde hair as streaked with soot as Tony’s face.  “How about those extinguishing arrows?”

Tony blinked.  “Oh, yeah.  Jarvis, open safe-box 199999?”

Kenta stared covetously at the arrows.  “ _Gods_ ,” he breathed.  “You said something about setting fires?”

Tony grinned gleefully, and pulled out a fire-thrower and a containment box.  “Ahead of you.”

Kenta beamed.  “This is the best job _ever_.”

Tony held back the slightest flinch at the reminder of just _who_ made sure that Kenta was an Alexandrian citizen.  _BINYAN_.

“Seriously,” Kenta continued.  “You should see the junk they give me back at Pharos Ktana.  This stuff is like comparing the Bét Yisroel formula to a glass of milk!”

Tony scowled briefly at the thought of the Bét Yisroel formula, and then forced the scowl from his face.  The war was over.  The Bét Yisroel formula would probably never be important to the world again.

Tony shook away his dark thoughts.  “Well?”  He set a small block of coal in the containment box on fire.  “Are you going to try them out or not?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And Iron Man is done! Reminder that chapter six is maps so you have a better idea of how this universe looks different from ours.
> 
> The next installment in Alexandria 'Verse will be The Spider-Man, and will be significantly longer than either Captain Alexandria or Iron Man; so get excited!


	6. Maps

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maps are hosted on Kila9Nishika on DeviantArt. Zooming capabilities available there.

**Author's Note:**

> **SPOILERS**
> 
>  
> 
> LIST OF CHARACTERS:  
> Antony Stark- Tony Stark  
> Yasuf Yinsen- Yinsen  
> Virginia Potts- Pepper Potts  
> Aldwin Jarvis- Edwin Jarvis  
> Yonatan- Johnny Storm  
> Benyamin- Ben Grimm  
> Lucan- Logan (Wolverine)  
> Dr. Adlbert Worthington- Warren Worthington II  
> Dr. Alhandrei Piersi- Alexander Pierce (World Security Council)  
> Dr. Jarlemárr Hallr- Councilwoman Hawley (World Security Council)  
> Dr. Atsushi Yuasa- Councilman Yen (World Security Council)  
> Dr. Rahman Ibn Asad- Councilman Singh (World Security Council)  
> Dr. Inari Kivikaivo- Councilman Rockwell (World Security Council)  
> Dr. Ovadyah Stane- Obadiah Stane  
> Dr. Phillipos, Director of BINYAN- Colonel Phillips  
> Yohann Schmidt- Johann Schmidt (Red Skull)  
> Dr. Avraham Bét Yisroel- Dr. Abraham Erskine  
> Dr. Conrad Conochvars- Dr. Curt Connors  
> Nicholas Ibn Yakov Fury- Nick Fury  
> Miria of Narbonne- Maria Hill  
> Antun Vanko- Anton Vanko  
> Sepi Vanko- Igor Vanko  
> Dr. Alspeth Ros- Betsy Ross  
> Dr. Robert Brutus Banner- Bruce Banner  
> Dr. Batsheva Bét Angli- Betsy Braddock  
> Aldriki Kilijaan- Aldrich Killian  
> Filip Coulsson- Phillip Coulson  
> Yustus ‘Malleus’ Hamarr- Justin Hammer  
> Kenta François Mugidakr- Clinton Francis Barton  
> Naomi Eydíssdottir- Natasha Romanov  
> General Theodoros Ros- General Theodore “Thunderbolt” Ross
> 
>  
> 
> LIST OF PLACES:  
> Ostia- the historical Roman city of Ostia; now reduced to modern-day Ostia, Italy and Fiumicino, Italy  
> Fossa Nefertari- the Fossa Traiana in Fiumicino, Italy  
> Insulae Sacra- a smaller version of the modern-day Isola Sacra between Ostia and Fiumicino  
> Portus Nefertari- the historical Roman Portus Traiani Felicis; now modern-day Lago Traiano in Fiumicino  
> Aegupt (part of Aegupt-Yihudi/Aegupt-Judea)- Egypt, Sudan, and eastern half of Libya  
> Portus Augusti- the historical Roman Portus Augusti  
> Strait of Messana- the Strait of Messina  
> The Kingdom of the Vikings- the southern portions of Sweden and Norway, Denmark, the British Isles, Iceland, the tip of Greenland, and the northeastern portion of North America  
> Finland (as a name for Suomi Valtakunta)- Finland and the northern half of Russia minus the portion facing Alaska  
> Japan (also the Japanese Empire and Nihon)- Papua New Guinea, the majority of Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, most of the Pacific coast of Russia and northern China, the southeastern and southern coast of Alaska, and the entire western coast of North America into the Rocky Mountains  
> Sine- Historical Song Dynasty China, north Vietnam, and the entire island of which western modern-day Malaysia is a part  
> Maurya- the Indian subcontinent north to the Himalayas, the northern coastal portion of Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, northern Pakistan, and a portion of western Afghanistan  
> Neapolis- the Italian city of Naples  
> Messana- the Italian city of Messina on the island of Sicily  
> Byzantium (country)- Greece, eastern half of Turkey, the Balkans  
> Belgunda- Eastern half Belgium and southern half of the Netherlands  
> Bergunda- Western half of Belgium and Luxembourg  
> Venitz’ya- the historical Republic of Venice (only on the mainland of Italy)  
> Strait of Sicilia- Strait of Sicily  
> Carthage- the historical city of Carthage; or the modern day Tunisian city of Tunis  
> Cossira- the Italian island of Pantelleria in the Strait of Sicily  
> Lilibaion- the Italian city of Marsala on the island of Sicily  
> Sicilia- the Italian island of Sicily  
> Thonis- Kanopos- the Egyptian city of Abu Qir  
> Narbonne- the French Mediterranean coast and the southeastern half of the Pyrenees  
> Avrika- the entire northeastern coast of Africa, including Morocco, and the northern Mediterranean coast west from the Atlantic to Tripoli  
> Roma- the Italian Peninsula  
> Tirashid- the Egyptian city of Rashid, also known as Rosetta  
> Nahal- the Nile  
> Nahal Valley- the Nile River Valley  
> Medyolana- the Italian city of Milan  
> Tamiat- the Egyptian city of Damietta  
> Temienhur- the Egyptian city of Damanhur  
> Muslim Empire- Eritrea, Djibouti, western Ethiopia, the majority of Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, the southwestern corner of Turkey, southern Armenia, southern Azerbaijan, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, part of southern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikstan, southern Pakistan, and the easternmost portion of China  
> Ibernís- the Scottish city of Inverness  
> Nagchucka- the Tibetan city of Nagqu  
> Tibet- Tibet, most of western China, southwestern China, and the island of Borneo  
> Tingitana- the Moroccan city of Tangiers  
> Pharos Ktana (island in Alexandria)- no longer in existence


End file.
